


Not Like The Others

by LostOzian, NovaStars42



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Couch Surfing, F/F, Fae & Fairies, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Revenge, Soft Terezi Pyrope, Soft Vriska Serket, True Love, Vriska typical behavior, kinkshaming Eridan, legal use of alcohol, past bad relationships, slow burn kidnapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:36:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOzian/pseuds/LostOzian, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovaStars42/pseuds/NovaStars42
Summary: Vriska is living out of her car when she meets Terezi. She’s funny and clever and all kinds of nice, even letting her crash on her couch while she’s in between jobs. Vriska never suspected a thing, until she found out the truth.Terezi is a Faerie on assignment to kidnap humans for her queen when she meets Vriska, a prime candidate for abduction. But Vriska is pretty and fun, and Terezi realizes much too late she doesn’t want to give her up.A story about falling in love in an unconventional sense.





	1. When It Rains

**Author's Note:**

> This began as an RP and is being adapted by the two of us in to a full length fic!

“Look! It’s not my goddamn fault you gotta get punched in the face to cum!” Vriska shouted at the top of her lungs, hanging up on her ex for the last time. This was the last time she was going to answer when he called. She didn’t care if her phone vibrated all night.

She was seated on the curb outside a 7-11, her junker in the parking spot in front of her, the engine smoking. The black haze coming out of the open hood stunk like gasoline and charred electric wires, she didn’t know much about cars but she knew this wouldn’t be cheap to fix. She had a thousand dollars to her name and it was going to cost that, if not more, to fix whatever the fuck was wrong with her car. Fuck. It was almost the end of the month too. She wasn’t going to be able to pay her phone bill after she paid for the car.

She raked her hand through her long hair, greasy from a few days unwashed. What the fuck was she going to do now? She had no friends left to call. She was tired and getting hungry, her make-up smeared under her eyes after she’d slept in it, though the sleep wasn’t restful in her back seat. She looked rough and she knew she did, but shit, what was there to do about it? Nobody was coming to rescue her. 

She guessed this had started about a week ago. She’d gotten fired, so she was spending most of her day in the apartment she shared with her now ex boyfriend. He’d come home from work at his dad’s company and pick a fight. That wasn’t unusual, they fought a lot. The last straw had come during nightly make up sex, he’d kept asking her for increasingly weird things. Every few days, something harder. Vriska was interested in exactly none of those things, call her vanilla. He didn’t listen when she said no and tried to force, so she left.

Packed her shit last Friday before he got home from work, threw it in her car and left.

She sighed, looking down at her phone as it began to vibrate again. His photo appeared and she really, really debated answering it.

Maybe it had started more than a week ago. Maybe this had started months ago, or a year ago when they meet. Maybe it had started nine months ago when her friend group had given her an ultimatum, it was friends or boyfriend. Of course, like a bitch she’d picked Eridan. Like a boy could make her happier than the girls that had her back since high school. Eridan hadn’t treated her friends any better than he treated her, and they were fed up.

She could sympathize now.

What the fuck was she going to do now? Get a tow to a shop, probably. What was that going to cost? Fifty? One hundred dollars? She didn’t know. She couldn’t live in the car while it was fixed, she’d have to get a hotel and a ride there. More money she didn’t have. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Vriska looked up at the sound of plastic on rubber, the sound pulling her out of her down spiral. There was a girl in front of her, or rather sort of off to the right, tapping a cane on her tire, which reverberated with a full, thick sound. Just stopped there, standing. She looked normal enough, with a bob haircut, t-shirt, and jeans, and some red lensed glasses. The cane that had hit her tire was red and white, long too, and Vriska thought maybe she recognized it as something blind people used, though this was the first time seeing one in person.

“Wow,” the stranger spoke. “I’ve never smelled a jalopy so burned. Do you know what’s wrong with this? How are you going to get out of here if your car is this jacked up?”

Who the fuck was this girl? Where’d she come from? Just like, out of thin air or something? Did Vriska know this person from somewhere maybe? Regardless, she was speaking and Vriska’s attention was captured. “Yeah, I know what’s wrong with it. It’s fucking broke,” Vriska huffed. “Officially diagnosed with All Fucked Up disorder. I dumped all kinds of money into this stupid piece of shit and it goes and does this to me. But just when you think it can’t get any worse right?” So, the car was fried and parked until further notice. But at least she wasn’t at home with Eridan. Anywhere with anyone was better than at home with Eridan. And he’d finally stopped calling. “Dunno how I’m getting out of here. I’ll figure it out,” she frowned, and immediately got a low battery notification on her phone. Oh yes, things could certainly always get worse.

She looked back up from her phone in time to watch the stranger lean over her engine, face near the smoke. Vriska had no idea what she was looking for, or if she was even looking at anything. She sort of looked to be smelling it maybe? Judging by the way her nose wrinkled. Vriska just let her be, there were plenty of weird people in the city and most of them were harmless.

The stranger did turn back in Vriska’s direction and gave her a smile, her face aimed maybe a foot or so off to the side of where Vriska actually sat, one hand resting on the car’s grill.

“…Actually, maybe this isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s bad, but this thing might run once, if you can cool it down. Are you desperate enough to take advice from a blind girl?” She asked, and Vriska thought maybe something was off about the way she smiled. “Tell you what, before you go calling a repairman who will charge you through the roof for a tow job on top of a repair, go inside and buy a bottle of water. Then dump it over this engine and we’ll see how well it runs.”

Vriska looked up at her incredulously, eyes squinted and her frown as prominent as her drawn-together brows. So, this girl was blind, she’d admitted it herself on top of the glasses and the cane, and she was giving Vriska mechanical advice based on… on what? Smell? That seemed off. Every time she’d been to a mechanic they’d plugged something in to her car that could tell right away what was wrong. Some kind of sensor, she wasn’t really sure.

Was she desperate enough to take advice from a blind girl, though? Well. Yeah. Yeah she was. Or else she’d be sleeping in a potential fire hazard tonight if she couldn’t get a tow this late.

“Yeah, alright,” she said finally, and stood up. “Be right back.”

She turned her back on the car and the stranger, pulled the door open and walked in. The fluorescent lights buzzed above her head, the building filled with the scent of stale doughnuts and sugary glaze as she went to the back cooler for a bottle of water, and she grabbed a big one. That was good logic, right? Big bottle for something big like an engine? At the register, she had to dig a bit, but eventually she came up with enough loose change to pay for the bottle after taking twenty pennies out of the ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ cup.

The bell on the door chimed as she returned, already cracking the bottle. “So, just pour it over it? Really? You’re sure that’s gonna work?”

With a big smile, the stranger nodded. “Yep! Douse it with water, then try the keys. You know you’d drink water if you were dehydrated, why not rehydrate your car? You won’t get any water in the important parts, and the temperature will help cool it right down.”

That really didn’t seem right. She wasn’t exactly sure if cars could get dehydrated, but the cooling it off part seemed plausible enough. Maybe there was some truth to the bullshit. Plus, she’d already bought the bottle.

Vriska walked up front and center to her engine block and poured water all over it. She tried to make sure she got the whole thing, washing the soot that had collected off the motor. She expected it to steam, like a hot pan in the sink right after you cooked in it, but it didn’t, just revealed shiny metal underneath.

She looked up at the stranger, her face scrunched up, unsure but the stranger’s face remained unchanged. Oh right. Blind. She couldn’t see the unease she had written all over her face. She didn’t say anything though. Just capped the now empty bottle, and walked around to the driver’s door. The bottle joined the trash heap she was accumulating on the floor of her backseat, and she pushed her keys back into the ignition.

The car revved to life just as soon as she turned the key, all her sensors and gauges coming alive, bouncing from one end to the other and back, and her check engine light had even gone off! She knew her eyes were wide. She listened for a moment, hearing only the steady beating of the engine, no clicks or thumps or squeals, just steady. And no smoke! No smell either. She couldn’t believe this. She checked her gauges again, hitting a button on her display to check further read outs. Her tires were still all different weights, but that was usual.

“Holy shit. Hooooly shit!” She exclaimed. “It fixed it! Holy shit, it worked! God, I can’t believe this. Oh my god, my car!” She hugged the steering wheel like it was a long lost friend, grinning ear to ear.

Vriska looked back up, glancing over her unlikely savior. She wasn't so intimidating, about Vriska’s height, about her same size. She seemed pretty smart too, and intelligence was rare in people these days. Maybe there was something he could do to say thank you. 

“Hey, can I take you home or something? I mean, it’s pretty late at night. And you did help.”

“How kind of you,” the stranger said. “I could use a set of wheels, but they don’t let people like me operate motor vehicles. I have no idea why, though.”

“You don’t say,” she snarked. “Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t let you have a car.”

She waited for the girl to make her way around the car, being as patient as she could. Vriska watched her extend her cane again and tap around the edge of the car until she found the passenger’s seat. Vriska sort of owed this girl a favor and she didn’t like owing people anything. She’d take her home, drop her off, and drive away, probably sleep in a Walmart parking lot out by the RVs. She’d probably never see this girl again either. “It’s messy,” Vriska warned. If she couldn’t see it, she was pretty sure she could feel it when she sat down. Papers and receipts and broken pens, probably. “I’ve kinda been like. Using this as a portable apartment.” And a portable trash can, apparently. Whatever. She’d clean it eventually. Wherever she parked it to sleep usually had a trash can, and so did the various fast food places she was basically living off of. “So, where do you need to go, uh.” Fuck. Name? Vriska didn’t know her name. “What’s your name, anyway? I’m Vriska, by the way. Vriska Serket.”

The girl smiled like Vriska had just offered her a lottery jackpot on top of a ride home. “Vriska-by-the-way-Serket, it’s nice to meet you. You can call me Terezi,” she introduced. “I’ve got an apartment on Oak Boulevard, it’s this complex with a big tree out front. I doubt you’ll miss it.”

“Gotcha.”

She knew the building, she’d drove by it a million times on the way to and from her former job as a waitress. She knew the tree too, she definitely wouldn't miss it. She gingerly put the car in reverse, because the last thing she needed was for the damn thing to break again. Then she swerved across two lanes to get them going in the right direction. Who said you couldn’t drive in the turn lane? You definitely could.

“So what brought you to this fine marketplace on such a late evening? Are you one of those modern vagabonds touring the nation?” Terezi said.

Vriska looked away from the road for just a moment to look at Terezi, watching a millisecond of her folding her cane up to easier sit in the crowded front seat. Of course. Because this couldn’t just be simple, Terezi had to ask questions. Vriska looked back to the road.

“Listen, I know your blind, but that ‘fine marketplace’ had at least an inch of grime on the door handle,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I uh. Don’t worry about why I was out. My boyfriend and I, actually, my ex-boyfriend and I are no longer living together and I’m between jobs, so I mean, I’m just kinda out and about all the time, I guess.”

She tried hard to play it off. She wasn’t unemployed, she was between jobs. She wasn’t homeless, she just wasn’t living with her ex. She looked over again, just for a split second, to check Terezi for changes in her expression. She didn't want to see pity on Terezi's face. Her gut rolled in disgust just imagining it.

“Wow, sans job and sans man? You must be one of those crazy bitches I’ve heard so much about,” Terezi said. “But crazy bitch or not, I am certain that job and that man don’t deserve you.”

That was nice of her to say, actually. It was hard to keep her eyes on the road, same as it was hard to turn your back on a stranger, especially a chatty one. “Actually, if you don’t have anywhere better to be either, I have a couch, and I have an idea. Why don’t you stay the night, and then tomorrow, we can plan the most perfect vengeance for this ex-boyfriend of yours! I’m willing to bet he still has some of your stuff, doesn’t he? Just think about all the ways he deserves some comeuppance. What was his problem, anyway? I think I overheard something about him needing to be punched? Before you accuse me of anything, remember that you _ were _ kind of shouting.”

Crazy bitch? Absolutely. That wasn’t a new one at all. Vriska’s eyebrows rose though, and she grinned, almost laughing actually.

“I’ve been told I’m a _ huge _bitch tonight already, sure, put crazy on the pile,” she joked. But Terezi was right, her job in retail didn’t deserve her. Sure, she didn’t get along with anyone, but when she did work she worked her ass off! And Eridan could take a fuckin hike. She was starting to like this stranger more and more.“Sure, I was shouting. But he really does need to be punched, and not in the way he wants me to,” she said, making a fake gagging sound. “I can deal with crazy, but what I can’t deal with is him coming home every night and thinking just because I’m not working he can come up with all these weird kinks and fetishes and expect me to indulge him like he’s the mother fucking prince.”

“But yeah,” she continued. “He does have a bunch of my shit still. And revenge is fucking sweet.” And spending the night on the couch didn’t sound too bad. For once she wouldn’t be scrunched up in the back seat under a jacket. “You’d really let me couch surf tonight?”

“Vriska, you are welcome to as much of my hospitality as you need. I’m not running a charity, but you’re smartand I am totally confident that you will make it worth my while,” Terezi answered. “Starting with letting me come along as we exact revenge on your shitty ex. You’re the one with a personal stake in this, but let’s just say, I have an overdeveloped sense of justice. As soon as we get to my place, sleep over, and in the morning we’ll make a game plan.”

Vriska couldn’t believe her luck. Someplace to stay for the night and help wrecking Eridan’s life tomorrow morning? He didn’t go to work until nine, so she could even sleep in. This had her feeling better than when she walked out. The best part was Terezi didn’t make her feel weird about it, she was doing this because she was nice, not because she felt bad or because she was trying to be a hero.

“That’s really nice of you,” she remarked, and that was probably the closest thing to a thank you Vriska had in her vocabulary. “We’re gonna make his life a living hell, and you wouldn’t believe how excited I am.”

This time Terezi’s laugh was a little louder, her grin a little bigger. The apartment wasn’t much further, and Vriska pulled into the lot, unsure if she should expect multiple buildings or just one with many units, but that was the tree and the sign so this was the place.

“We’re here, where am I going with this thing?”

“I’m in the fourth building on the end. Just pull into any parking spot, the apartment is on the ground floor. 1-C.”

The complex turned out to be simple, only four stout buildings, two stories each. Nonindustrial, not fancy, just plain. The walkways were clear but not particularly manicured, and the shrubs were kept cut to keep them in a rounded shape but not so much it looked like the lawn crew worked their fingers to the bone on them. The siding wasn’t freshly painted but it wasn’t peeling. The whole place was basically just very uninteresting. Building 4 was clearly labeled on a sign outside the beige building and Vriska pulled around to it. She turned the car off, slipping the lanyard her keys were on over her head. Her bag with her changes of clothes and toiletries was in the trunk, and she got out to grab it. Her trunk made her car look clean it was so bad, and she had to zip the bag up before she could move it, not wanting things to fall out of it, but she got it eventually and shut the trunk, going to reconvene with Terezi.

“You can basically borrow anything you need tonight,” Terezi added. “The only thing I ask in return is you not leave your stuff lying around. I basically know where everything is in my apartment so I can move around, and I don’t want to trip over your shit. Consider it the least you can do for a blind girl…?"

Vriska quirked an eyebrow. That was all? Nothing else bsides keep her shit picked up? Maybe her luck as starting to turn, because that was pretty simple. She wouldn't be staying here a long time anyay, so it’d work out. 

“Yeah sure, I’ll put my bag next to the couch,” she agreed, but the whole ‘borrow anything you need’ had her interest piqued. Anything? Did she really mean anything? “Does that include borrowing your shower? I brought my own like, soap and stuff I grabbed before I left.” She really wanted a shower, probably more than sleep right now. Her hair was starting to get greasy and tangled, and she could feel the nasty oil build up on her skin along with the need to wash her face. Her eyeshadow probably looked like a raccoon did a panda’s make up right about now. Thank god Terezi couldn’t see her.

“Sure,” she replied, and seemingly pulled a key out of nowhere. First her hand was empty, and then there was the key. Vriska did a double take, but then decided it was only because she hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Maybe she had it in her pocket or on a chain somewhere.

They approached the building, walking up under covered walkway that led to the ground floor apartments. The outside of the door was just like the building, brown and unassuming, but that only added to the shock of what was behind it. Terezi unlocked her door and revealed to her the room inside.

There was very little furniture inside, a couch, two chairs, a couple tables, a bookcase and a television, just plain like everything else. Everything else in the room though, it made her eyes burn. The place was decorated like a Lisa Frank coloring book threw up in here, or like a bomb went off in a crayola factory. Rainbow pillows, colored throws, rugs of every shape, size, and texture in every color covered the floor. She had those hippie tapestries that were popular up on the wall too, in a sunburst tie dye. Terezi’s curtains could only be described as neon, and Vriska wholey expected them to start flashing.

Vriska did not say a word, and believe her, it was a struggle to keep her mouth shut. Holy fuck, what technicolor day dream wandered in here and exploded? She was again glad Terezi couldn’t see her face, because she was sure she looked near stunned. God, why the fuck was it so bright? Was it because she was blind?? Maybe she couldn’t see what she was buying? “Nice place you got here,” she remarked, but only once she’d got ahold of herself and was sure the tone of her voice wouldn’t give away her color shock. Fuck, the bathroom was probably going to be more of the same. “You lived here long?” She wandered in after removing her shoes too, looking over the room in more detail. She dropped her bag next to the couch as she promised and sort of did a slow turn, taking it all in. It looked like a pretty normal apartment besides the eye burning colors, and the throw blanket on the couch looked soft even if it was bright. This wouldn’t be bad. Besides, a shower and a couch were a shower and a couch.

"Well, it’s mine enough,” Terezi said. “I’m here for a short-term assignment, doing a lot of research and stuff. I don’t expect to be here long enough to buy my own furniture, but I still want it to feel like my home.”

Terezi turned back toward Vriska, attracting her attention, and took a very intense stance before she spoke again, adding a serious tone to her voice. “But most importantly, before you do anything, you need to understand that you have my protection in this space. None shall harm you, and you shall be provided for as my guest. These are the ancient rules of hospitality!!!”

And then Terezi just kind of waved her hands at Vriska like the flourish at the end of a magic trick. Vriska sort of stared at her, blinking for a moment before she just said “What.”

It wasn’t even posed as a question. This was supposed to be just for the night, right? What’s she talking about being provided for and none harming her? Protection in this space? No really, what was she talking about? Vriska was sort of regretting agreeing to this, maybe she shouldn’t have trusted a stranger after all. Terezi was sounding a bit crazy now, but honestly this wouldn’t be the first place she ran out on in the middle of the night.

But shower. She couldn’t get over the fact she wanted a shower. Instead of leaving, Vriska sort of lingered, and then bent over to grab her shampoo, hairbrush and her pajamas out of the bag.

“Right uh. Okay then. I’m assuming the shower is back through the hallway? I’ll be back soon. Thanks?” she muttered, like she wasn’t sure exactly what to say, and she wasn’t. Terezi was nice and she was appreciative, but that proclamation was a bit strange to say the least. Without another word she slipped off to figure out where the bathroom was.

The door to the bathroom was plain wood, but it opened to a mess similar to the front door. The shower curtain was green, the bath mat was orange, the towels all shades of pink and yellow. Vriska was only focused on the shiny silver metal of the shower head.

She started the shower and undressed, and waited until she was under the spray to turn it up as hot as she could stand. She sighed out, letting the water beat down on her skin. God, that felt so nice. It felt even better to get her hair clean, and have a washcloth to rub her face clean, her makeup running down the drain.

She stayed in as long as she could, and then got out. She towel dried her hair and brushed it, fluffing it up nice and she smiled for once in the mirror. That was so much better. She cleaned up after herself was requested, and she brought it back out to her bag after pulling on a pair of navy blue pajama pants and an old tee shirt.

“Dude, your water pressure is so good it deserves an award,” she noted as she passed Terezi in the kitchen on the way to her bag. She eyed her close, noticing a steaming mug in her palm, a measuring cup on the counter with its proud Pyrex name visible, and a couple of small boxes labeled with different sorts of tea.

“Whatcha got there, by the way?” She asked, standing up straight again after zipping her bag shut. As if she didn’t already know.

“Nothing much,” Terezi answered as Vriska came closer.

“Not to mooch, but would you let me mooch?”

“Ugh, fine,” Terezi agreed, and she stuck out her tongue, and shoved the boxes sitting nearby on the counter her way as Terezi went to heat another measuring cup full of water. Vriska watched her body language. She wasn’t unused to putting people out and she knew exactly how to remedy this situation. She opened her preferred box and pulled out a tea bag with a coy grin. “Thaaaaaaaanks, friend.”

It sort of relaxed people to call them friend, Vriska had noticed. Like they were on the same side like they were somehow together. They weren’t friends, they’d just meet about an hour ago, but fuck if Vriska wasn’t going to play this up.

“So you said you’re here doing research? What kind of research are you doing? Are you like, a scientist or something? When you said short term, you made it sound pretty important,” she remarked. Small talk with schmoozing was kind of her deal, something else that made people more comfortable.

“Good ear,” Terezi responded, standing in front of the microwave and waiting for the beep. “I’m doing a lot of legal research. Precedents and decisions and lots and lots of very precise grammar. I find it interesting, but it’s just really hard to convince others that it is. I get my hands on a lot of Braille books here, and then I spend hours writing up summaries, and then sometimes I go for long walks by highways looking for the most delicious treats 7-11 has to offer. Maybe someday, I can be a real lawyer, and I can take the wealthy and powerful for all they’re worth,” she added.

That brought a laugh from Vriska. “Hell yeah. Take those sons a bitches down a peg.”

The water was done heating eventually, and Terezi used her fingertips to read the Braille on it to find the button that opened the door. She ferried it over to Vriska from there, and Vriska took over. She wasn’t paying attention at all to what Terezi had put in hers, but she was feeling genuinely pretty good as she dunked the bag in the water.

She took a sip off of her mug, delighted at the taste despite it being so simple. She hadn’t imagined this was how this night was going to turn out. She was pretty sure her stubborn ass was going to end up in her back seat, again, and have to smell burnt engine and Slurpee syrup all night long.

“So you want to be a lawyer, huh? Sounds like you’re on the right track doing all the legal research then. When you leave, where do you go back to then? A bigger city than this or something? Or maybe you’re a country bumpkin?”

“My hometown is very far from here, this real backwoods place,” Terezi explained. “I visit often, but I really try and take as many of these assignments as I can. They give me chances to travel, and I like making these places my home, at least for a bit. It’s really important for me to know where ‘home’ is… but that probably makes me a weirdo.”

Terezi sipped her tea and turned the question back onto Vriska. “What about you? Were you grown here, or did someone transplant you?”

Vriska didn’t think that was at all weird. Home always seemed like a concept to Vriska, one she hadn’t figured out how to achieve. But still, hearing about this apparent backwoods Terezi was from was made her want to know more. But she only provided so much before turning it around.

…That was a sore subject.

“I was born here,” she answered. “But sometimes I wish somebody transplanted me.”

Perhaps, if she’d been born somewhere else, to somebody else, that idea of home would have been a little bit easier to conceptualize. She didn’t give up any more information. She debated running her mouth, lying, or rather maybe just ‘embellishing’ but decided to just stay shut up about the whole thing.

Maybe Terezi wouldn't ask. Vriska knew she probably would though. What to tell her, what to tell her? Most likely not the truth. Maybe a version of the truth.

Terezi paused. Didn’t pry.

“Maybe you can get away from it all. Once you’re back on your feet, or something,” Terezi suggested, and then she patted Vriska and withdrew her hand, setting her nearly-drained mug in the sink and playing at a yawn. “You mind if we pick this up in the morning? If I’m tired, you must be exhausted.”

Relief. Deep-seated relief filled her chest. She didn’t ask. She offered a substitute. Get away from all of this. Leave the city even. Start over somewhere where nobody knew her name or her face or the trail of disaster she left in her wake. She just wanted to go to sleep, and that was fine with her. All the excitement from a shower and a cup of something had almost made her forget how tired she was.

Watching Terezi yawn made her yawn. “Yeah uh. I am. Thanks for this by the way. Goodnight.”

Vriska waited until Terezi was gone to drink the rest of her tea and place it next to Terezi’s mug in the sink. She hit the couch and it didn’t even take her long to get comfortable. Terezi’s couch might as well be a king-sized bed in the best hotel in the city. She was out like a light within a minute.


	2. I Don’t Want Your Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revenge is Sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is told from Terezi’s point of view.

The door to the bedroom clicked shut as Terezi left Vriska alone to settle in and go to sleep. Sleep wasn’t going to come for her, not until much later. Her kind, the fae, didn’t require much sleep. She retreated to her bedroom and booted up the computer. It was kind of embarrassingly outdated, but it worked well enough. At least this was an age of silicon and aluminum, not iron.

She had some research to do on one Vriska Serket, identifying everything in the public record to confirm who she was, where she had come from, what she had done, and what she might do next. Social media records were usually a godsend for stuff like this, and even with a burning curiosity about the hurt that made Vriska want to leave her old life, Terezi didn’t expect the internet to tell her anything about that.

Vriska’s online presence was a mess, to put things simply. Her twitter account was public and filled with arguing and profanity, and her Facebook, while not public, still had her profile picture of her and her ex despite her relationship status being single. She did appreciate the image of Vriska with Eridan because it gave her a baseline of what to expect from the asshole. 

Vriska didn’t read to Terezi as a rebel with any kind of cause, just someone who wanted everyone else to fuck off. There was plenty to dig up wherever Terezi decided to look, but one thing was pronounced. She had no family listed, and very few people interacted with her despite having ‘friends’ and ‘followers'.

Terezi sat back in her office chair, going over her screen again. She mostly wanted to know if anyone would come looking for Vriska if she happened to vanish. No job, no family, and now no boyfriend. No, no one would miss Vriska. Which made her a perfect candidate.

There were no photos, clothing or personal effects in Terezi’s apartment as proof, but Vriska wasn’t the first person Terezi had taken in. She wouldn't be the last either. She glanced at the calendar on her desk, flipping the page over to the next page, feeling not for the date but the phases of the moon marked at the bottom in Braille. In just a little under a month, Terezi could drop her glamour and go home. Vriska would be coming too, as part of her job.

Terezi brought gifts home to the Faerie Queen, and in turn, the Queen saw to it that Terezi was comfortable.

Terezi only dozed a few hours, waking around four in the morning to resume working, first on her legitimate hobby of reading about court decisions (some of the hijinks that humans got up to would put the wittiest faerie spellcrafters to shame) and then, when the sun was closer to being up, on making some breakfast. She padded past her sleeping guest to the kitchen to set up more water for tea and started cracking eggs into a frypan to scramble with cheese and pepper. Eventually, the scent of hot breakfast started to fill the space, and Terezi set aside a portion for herself, which she promptly added gummy worms too. She loved the rainbow taste in the middle of the fluffy egg texture.

Food roused Vriska, just like Terezi thought it would. Vriska rubbed her eyes and pulled the blanket up closer. Her head whipped around as she sat up, expression confused, like she didn’t quite remember where she was. Upon seeing Terezi, she relaxed.

“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice still thick with sleep. “You making eggs?” She asked, eyebrows furrowing. “What time is it?”

Terezi smiled and answered with a “Morning, sleepyhead,” and then heaped another lump of eggs onto a plate, this one without any gummy worms added. She brought it over to Vriska, handing it over as she sat beside her and answered her question: “Just about eight, give or take a few minutes. I just tend to get up early, and you had a rough night besides.”

As Terezi gave Vriska her plate, she tucked into her own conspicuously candied plate of eggs, chewing on protein and sugar gelatin indiscriminately.

“So, the plan is to wreck your ex’s shit,” Terezi said. “What do you have in mind? Start spitballing me, sister.”

Vriska took the offered plate with slow hands. Her hair was fluffed on one side and flat on the other where she’d slept on it. Still clearly half asleep, she noticed what at Terezi was eating. Terezi chewed, daring her to say something. She probably could have skipped the worms, but she kind of wanted to know how Vriska would react. There were going to be a lot of very crazy things going on in Vriska’s life if she stuck with Terezi, and she needed to help set Vriska’s tolerance for bullshit high.

“Uh,” She stammered, staring. “The plan. Right. Um. So I’ve still got a key to the apartment, and I was thinking we could let ourselves in and fuck up his shit. Laxatives in the milk, dye in his shampoo bottle. Stuff like that. Stuff that won’t get me arrested but will still hurt him.” And then after a moment added; “Is that- are you eating candy?”

Terezi nodded along, very much down to business, taking Vriska’s information and slotting it into her head. The presence of a key helped, it meant Vriska technically still had claim over the residence’s threshold and would be able to invite Terezi inside. Her ideas about laxatives and dye sounded perfect, and Terezi already had some ideas to help her along.

"What, you’ve never seen a girl eat worms before?” she teased, enjoying how the quirk put Vriska on edge. “I know its freaky, but come on, stay focused here. I’m the girl who saved your ass and wants to help you wreck your ex’s shit. Do we need to hit up a drugstore before we get there, or is he so constipated that he keeps laxatives around? And I think we can go deeper, both to frustrate his existence and to punish him directly for wrongs against you…”

“Eat what you want dude, I just don’t know how you get up this early and get a sugar buzz,” Vriska shrugged. She stabbed her fork into a bit of egg and shoved it in her mouth. She tilted her head a bit as she chewed slowly, thinking clearly. She answered soon after. “He’s got everything at the house. For somebody who came from money, he’s a tight ass. In more ways than one. I’m thinking about unplugging the fridge. Or leaving a package of meat someplace he wouldn't think to look.” Forming another mouthful, she asked, “What about you? Any ideas?”

Terezi gleefully took Vriska’s advice to eat what she wanted and promptly made a show of wrapping her tongue around a gummy worm, showing off how flexible and dextrous she was with it as she claimed another delicious candy piece of breakfast. The salty-protein taste of the egg just enhanced it. When it came down to it, a lot of food from home was more like distilled feelings than actual flavors or sustenance, so combining these weird pangs of flavor from human foods was a joy to her.

“The meat in a hard-to-reach place sounds excellent, the kind of slow burn that will drive him crazy,” Terezi said. “Do you think we could add a fish somewhere obvious, to mask the odor of the meat until it starts to get bad? And also, I read a story about a different ex-revenge story, and one thing they did was they stole all the batteries from the scumbag’s remotes. I would love a pile of half-dead batteries from a shitty man’s home. We should be writing this down…”

Terezi set aside her plate for a second and got a pad of paper and pencil from her room, both patterned with rainbow stripes, and clearly untouched because a blind girl had no use for writing implements. She obviously just kept it around as another set of stuff that was obnoxiously colored.

“Dude loves fish. Like a sickening amount. That’s perfect,” Vriska agreed, nodding, food packing into her cheek so she could speak. She wiped her hands on her pants and took the paper pad. She wrote everything down in her chicken scratch penmanship.“So sounds like we’ve got a pretty good laundry list going here. I can’t think of anything else, 'cause like I said, he’ll know it was me and I don’t want to get arrested. He works nine to five, so by the time we’re ready he’ll be gone out of the house,” Vriska shrugged. “You don’t have to touch anything if you don’t want to. Fingerprints and all that bullshit.”

“I have gloves under the sink,” Terezi said, well aware of many methods for avoiding leaving traces of herself in places. “But I’m actually starting to wonder now, how in the hell did you meet this guy, let alone decide to date him? He sounds like he’s a disaster of a person and not in a cool, fun way. More like in a soul-sucking way.”

There was only so much Terezi could glean from social media, just that the relationship had started, and even though it was over, it hadn’t fully untangled. Vriska still had some hangups of her own about this guy, but he also had a feeling that he was entitled to call Vriska up at random hours of the night. Did he even know that Vriska was couch-surfing, practically homeless? If he knew how much danger Vriska was in, would he care?

“Well,” Vriska started, and she made a face. “So, I was working at a Starbucks about a year ago and he’d come through just about every day and order this obnoxiously complicated drink. Seriously, he’d start with a white chocolate mocha and it was unrecognizable by the end. But uh,” she shifted, uncomfortable but wouldn't show it. “I basically fought with him about this drink every single day, he’d accuse me of not making it right and I’d yell at him about holding up the line. One day he was so pissed he got out of his car and I was sure he was gonna punch me but he kissed me. I moved in like two days later.

“He gets all his money from his daddy. That should have been red flag number one. But I’m back in the same situation I was in when I meet him. So figures,” Vriska huffed. “What? Never had a shitty boyfriend of your own before? I could give you some pointers on how to catch one.”

“Wow, how good was the sex for you guys to keep that up for so long?” Terezi asked sarcastically. “And I don’t need help finding a shitty boyfriend, no. I have had exactly one crush on a male and it was when I was too young and inexperienced to realize that the cool kid I had become infatuated with was a massive dweeb. We fumbled around for a bit before I got wise and he turned out to be mega gay. I think he’s planning to marry his boyfriend in the fall.”

Talking excessively about the cool dweeb would hopefully dissuade Vriska from asking too many questions about Terezi herself. The less Terezi had to find a way to lie around, the better.

“Your guy sounds a lot more interesting than mine, though. Dweeby guys have their place too I guess, but I bet the massively gay thing was a surprise huh? That’s too bad it didn’t work out.”

“Eh, we’re both over it. But Mr. Violent Violet isn’t over you? Was there anything good about your relationship?”

“It was good, I guess. In the beginning. I had to break it off because on top of all his crazy he had a lot of weird kinks. Do you know it’s like, a thing to get off on peeing on somebody? How fucking gross is that?” Vriska remarked in very, very clear disgust in both her tone and her expression of a scrunched up nose. 

“Oh, _ god _ , why?!” Terezi scrunched up her nose. Just _ imagining _ what that would smell like wasn’t nearly enough to put her off her nearly-finished breakfast. She knew that no matter what kink Vriska had named, Terezi would have made a show of acting disgusted, but this one happened to be one Terezi genuinely found repulsive. “I don’t even know if I have it in me to wish that he finds happiness with a different lover. I don’t think anyone deserves this guy’s piss.”

Vriska laughed, but she leaned her elbow on her knee,her chin rested in her hand,and she smiled slyly. “You’re not off the hook with your own bad man story. Was he really your only guy crush? Are you just not up to date or uh, are you more into the ladies maybe?”

The fact Vriska still wanted to turn things around and ask about Terezi again was curious. A little annoying for the grand plan, but also nice. Terezi’s entire job revolved around acting as bait to humans, but it stroked Terezi’s ego a little that her mostly honest self enticed Vriska the most. She liked her for her, as the pop song kind of went.

“The gay thing was a bit of a curveball, but I knew he was gay before he did. He was pretty much the last one to know, the dunce. As for me, the answer is yes.” Terezi gave Vriska a wide grin, responding to her “or” with an “and.” Terezi both liked girls and couldn’t see herself entering a relationship with anyone. The nature of her work was too chaotic for any of that.

“Bummer about the boyfriend. I bet that was an ugly one to deal with. But you know what they say, huh? More fish in the sea?” Vriska quirked an eyebrow. “Or was it more snakes in the nest? Guess it doesn’t matter. It bites you in the ass every time regardless. Whatever.”

Terezi snickered to herself at the snakes in the nest comment. Vriska had a remarkable way of phrasing things. It definitely made her wonder if Vriska saw herself as one of those bisexual humans, or if she was locked into even more tragic relationships with the snakes of men. Ass-biters indeed.

Vriska huffed again, standing up. She had her plate in hand and reaching out for Terezi’s. Terezi made a point not to move. While she couldn’t see her with her eyes, Terezi could smell her. It was pretty accurate too, down to a few inches, which meant she had to keep this completely blind charade up for the humans. Wait until Vriska did something she could feel or hear.

“You done? Gimmie your plate,” Vriska said finally, and Terezi passed it to Vriska with a quiet ‘thanks.’ That was an oddity too, the rules of hospitality would tip back in Vriska’s favor if she kept being nice like this. Not enough to fully off-set Terezi’s generosity, but it gave Terezi pause. She had to make sure Vriska never had enough power to help Terezi in a major way.

Vriska took both plates to the kitchen, setting them both down in the sink, Terezi could hear them clink on the metal. She returned to the living room shortly after to sit back down on the couch. This time she pulled her bag out and began going through it, looking for clean, still folded clothes under all the junk and dirty shirts she’d slung on top. “I’m gonna get dressed and then we can go. He should be gone to work by the time we get over there.

“Take your time, I gotta get dressed too,” Terezi encouraged, and she left Vriska for her room to do just that. Unlike her guest, Terezi had a dresser full of clean clothes at her disposal. She chose a tie-dye shirt for the day, not done herself but it was certainly her style, colors ranging the rainbow from shoulders to hem. She chose a simple pair of jeans to go with them, liking that denim went with every color and she certainly had plenty. She was in the middle of getting dressed when her newfound friend knocked at the door.

“Hey, no rush,” Vriska called. “But do you have a can of soda I could bum off you?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right out,” Terezi called back. It wasn’t going to be hard to tip things back in her favor after all.

When Terezi emerged from the bedroom, Vriska was dressed in a pair of wrinkled high waisted shorts and a size-too-big tee shirt, the logo for a popular bar on the breast.

“Is a cherry cola fine?” Terezi offered, walking to her refrigerator and picking up the can and holding it out into the air for Vriska to choose if she wanted. 

“Cherry works,” Vriska answered, taking the can and cracking it.

“Honestly, it’s probably worth hitting a grocery store after we’re done wrecking your ex’s life, I feel like I’ve got some staples but I don’t know what you’re allergic to or anything. You’ve probably noticed that I eat a lot of weird stuff, and I don’t want to subject you to that.”

Terezi could practically hear Vriska’s lip curl in disgust. 

“Now I’m ready to roll when you are,” Terezi said. “Hopefully this asshole doesn’t live too far away?”

“Not too far. This is Oak, he lives on Third,” She answered. She was first out the door.

Terezi grinned at how well her soda had gone over. Honestly, if Vriska couldn’t care about soda flavors, she had absolutely no grounds to be weirded out when Terezi put candy in her scrambled eggs. No grounds whatsoever. At all. But Terezi could entertain some foibles like that, and all of it worked to build the network of information she had about Vriska Serket that could eventually lead to her downfall.

Man, Terezi loved her job.

She picked up her cane from the table near the door and unfolded it, and followed Vriska out. Vriska walked with purpose back to her car, unlocking the doors with her fob and it made a little sound as it did so. She got in first. She had a pair of sunglasses stashed under her sun visor, and she slipped them on as she began throwing junk off her passenger seat into the back seat. Taking her time, Terezi circled to the passenger seat again and settled in.

“I’m gonna have to clean this out eventually. I wish I had time to clear it out and dump it on the apartment floor. I’m just gonna take all the trash bags instead, I fuckin bought em,” she grumbled while she worked. She was satisfied when she could see the seat finally. “Good as it’s gonna get I guess. Get in if you can get it.”

She shoved her keys in the ignition, turning them, and the engine sprang to life. There was a little moment Terezi could tell Vriska had a fear her engine light would come back on, but Terezi had fixed the thing better than that. The comments about cleaning out her car were curious to her, like a thread in a sweater she could pull on later to make the whole thing unravel if she played smart.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re planning to do after we tear through your ex’s place like a scourge, but if you want to dump everything on my apartment floor and sort through it, that’s fine with me. I can stay in my room and do some research while the living room is a minefield, on the condition that you make the space navigable for a blind girl after… and maybe one other favor,” Terezi grinned. “Haven’t decided what that other favor will be yet, but it’s going to be a little one, I promise. I’m just thinking it will be easier for you to decide what to do next when there’s less chaos all over the place. Maybe you even have some money lost in here, you’ll want that back.”

“I meant his apartment floor, but thanks. I guess your apartment floor works too. I have to clean that up though, huh? I dunno if it’s worth it. I could just throw trash all over my old place and leave,” Vriska laughed.

She chucked a pair of water bottles on the top of the pile in the back and placed her coke in the cup holder, and it didn’t sit level because of the junk shoved into the hole. But once Terezi shut her door, she backed out of her spot and pulled around the parking lot.

Terezi snickered at the idea of dropping Vriska’s garbage all over Eridan’s floor. True, that was a better plan, far less mature and more damaging to an asshole who Terezi already proxy-hated. “Well, take a first pass to separate the treasure from the trash, and then figure out what you want to do with the rest of it at my place. Seriously, your car is disgusting. I’m blind and I can see that.”

They rode in silence after that until they pulled up to a stoplight, and Vriska reached for the muted radio. Some trendy pop song came on, too loud and too much bass, and she quickly turned it down. “You can DJ if you want.”

The power to DJ felt nice, once Vriska addressed the accidentally too-loud pop music. Terezi honestly would have been fine with the pop, it was the audible equivalent of tooth-rotting candy, and that was fine. But Vriska gave her a job to do, and Terezi wanted to do it well, cycling through some talk radio, then hip hop, until she landed on some classic rock. Now that was music to fuck someone up to.

She leaned back in her chair once she had the music selected, closing her eyes behind her shades and looking very much at peace for a moment. Vriska was a pretty good driver. Or she was being cautious for some reason, or-or there was nothing around for her to get frustrated with like traffic or badly timed lights. It legitimately was pretty peaceful, and Terezi liked the moment to breathe.

“…What if we got tacos when this is done,” Terezi voiced after a second. “There’s a family restaurant this way, been there a few times. It’s cheap and good.” Terezi couldn’t bring up anything about Vriska’s long-term future, not without earning a little bit more trust, so she had to be cognizant of making sure she always dictated Vriska’s next move, even slightly.

“Tacos? Yeah, I guess that sounds good, but what are we gonna do tonight, though?”  
  
“Clean up this mess of a car. If you’re going to stick around and let me bum rides off of you, it should be less of a pigsty.” Terezi could really put up with the mess, but if Vriska was encouraged to purge her worldly possessions, maybe she’d be easier to lure away when the time came.

“Ugh, fiiiiiiiine. But what about after that? I want to do something _ fun _.”

“My idea of fun is Judge Judy.”

“Gross. Well… tomorrow’s Saturday, right? There’s the Nighthawk--you know that, right? The club? Girls get in free and it’s half-off drinks. We could go get shit faced. I mean, assuming you wanna hang out. You might have plans for the weekend, I dunno.”

Oh, now this was a curious development. Terezi had thought she’d need to engineer something to keep Vriska in her sphere, selectively calling one of these favors Vriska owed her to accrue more leverage over her chosen human target, but no, Vriska wanted to go out for ladies’ night.

Man, did Vriska have prioritization and decision-making problems? Here she was, homeless and living out of her car, and jobless if her social media profiles were to be believed… and she wanted to go get shitfaced with a woman she met barely twelve hours earlier? It was strange, and for the first time, Terezi could feel a little voice in her head say ‘don’t.’ She promptly ignored it.

Vriska got into the left-hand lane and completed her turn, now on Third Street. The apartment building wasn’t too far down, and she pulled into the parking lot, dodging the potholes. It was a nice new building, but it wasn’t being kept up very well, evident by the state of the driveway and the untrimmed bushes. Vriska pulled her keys from the ignition and started looking for the right one before she even got out.

“I forgot this place is kind of a shit show,” she said with a smirk. She liked Terezi talking her up, that was clear. ”And I’m pretty sure the apartment still looks like my car. So you’ve got the cane, your probably gonna need it.”

Terezi followed Vriska’s orders to have her cane at the ready, stepping out into the driveway and tapping around to get a sense of the layout. The area smelled like concrete and foliage, but blended in a very oil-and-water kind of way, not like an artistic decision but as a harsh crash of man-made and natural structures. The trees had a particularly rebellious odor to them. “You lead the way, Vriska. I’ve got your back.”

Vriska guided Terezi through the door and up a flight of stairs. Their apartment was the second on the left, and she unlocked the door with practiced ease. This was familiar and Terezi observed she did it almost on autopilot.

Terezi did appreciate Vriska’s attention on the way up the stairs. Terezi’s little smokescreen pad was on the ground floor for a reason, stairs were just a bitch that she hated dealing with, so as much as it made her uncomfortable that Vriska again gained a single inch in their unwitting duel of favors, she really felt glad that she didn’t have to feel out the steps and the handrail on the way up.

Stepping inside the door went smoothly too because Vriska still felt enough ownership over the place to waltz inside and take Terezi with her with no problem. Eridan had left his threshold permeable to his ex, which was a rookie mistake.

Except… Vriska really didn’t like what she saw on the inside. Terezi sniffed around and it looked like a kind of bland apartment. There was a beat where nothing happened and Terezi couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary happening. Terezi expected Vriska to say something, but she clammed up. She didn’t say anything just strode away from her. Terezi heard her feet cross the floor and stop, and then seconds later there was a loud ceramic sounding crash as something hit the floor. It was still-warm coffee in a mug, by the smell of it.

Vriska flew from the spot to the kitchen and started rifling through his refrigerator, Terezi could hear the seal click and the clicking of glass as she did. She took that opportunity to invite herself in.

“Are you alright?” Terezi asked.

“Do whatever the fuck you want,” she snarled, pissed but not at Terezi. “You can stand there for all I care, I don’t give a single fuck.”

“Sounds like it’s time to throw out the plan,” Terezi said, making a show of poking her cane around for the shards of mug before she found Eridan’s TV remote as promised and started fiddling to remove its batteries. “What’s so upsetting about this apartment? Are the walls a different color now?”

“No. He cleaned it,” she responded. “Fucking dated him a year and he never lifted a finger. I’m gone for five days and the place is fucking spotless!”

Vriska must have found the fish, Terezi could hear the cellophane rip. Vriska took the first one and took it into the bathroom. The ceramic toilet tank lid clanked, so Terezi assumed she shoved the fish in it in before setting the lid back on. Vriska went back for a second one, and Terezi could almost hear the cogs turning in her head. Vriska took a second to think, and then she noisily grabbed a chair so she could climb on to a counter and grab ahold of the light fixture, shoving the second fish inside the bowl like cover over it. 

He might find that one pretty fast but he’d have to deal with taking care of it. She jumped down and went for the third. She strode like she left fire where she walked over to the sofa that used to be theirs, to be hers, and started ripping the cushions off of it. She was going to have to get that fish deep to keep him from finding it.

Terezi blinked in shock at Vriska’s scorched-earth determination to completely wreck Eridan’s apartment. She had gotten the impression so far that Vriska was abrasive and opinionated, the kind of person who alienated friends and co-workers who couldn’t keep up with her, but seeing it all in vengeful action made Terezi’s heartbeat a bit quicker. There was something… familiar about it? In a good way? She had never actually seen a human act like this before, as much as they immortalized it in their songs of scorned women and betrayed lovers. Vriska’s follow-through was downright faerie. If she had magic of her own, the place might have been leveled.

She finished with the batteries and pocketed them, suddenly feeling like she wasn’t doing enough to pull her weight. Stinky fish in hard-to-reach places, check. But what else would wreck Eridan’s life? She edged around to the TV and reached behind it, pulling on cords, any cords, until they started to come loose. Then she traced them to where they came from, unplugging from the other ends. Power cables, video cables, audio cables, nothing would connect to anything else, and it would be a pain in the ass to try and find replacements for such unconventional parts.

Awesome. What else, what else. Vriska’s sudden rage brought on a similar sudden emotion in Terezi: a desire to impress Vriska with how vengeful and vindictive she could be.

“Hey, you with the eyes, take anything you like. Even if it’s something of his. Anything you wanted for yourself,” she encouraged before she tapped around with the cane and found Eridan’s bedroom. What was that Vriska had said about one of his kinks? One of the deal-breakers? The smelly one…? She put her hand on the doorframe, stepped inside, and then started to close it. “Hey, I’ll be back in two minutes. Just need a little privacy, okay?”

Vriska didn’t answer. She was too far on her warpath to stop now. Terezi had herself handled, Vriska knew. She didn’t need her to hover. This would only take a few moments.

Sure, maybe Vriska had told her this was something Eridan was ‘into,’ but she had a feeling that he would absolutely not be 'into’ someone inflicting his kink upon him without his prior knowledge or consent. And maybe he would be extra angry to think that someone had done this to his bed where he couldn’t watch! This day was about wounds and rubbing salt into them.

On top of that, Terezi had one more thing to keep in mind. She had a scant few weeks until the way home opened for her. Two weeks was plenty of time for Eridan Ampora to press charges against Vriska for breaking and entering, vandalism, and theft, and even with all of the plausible deniability in the world, Vriska would absolutely be a flight risk, and Terezi couldn’t steal her if she was in human jail.

She reached out with her hands and suffused more of her magical energy into the space around her, pushing one word, one question, into the very essence of the apartment: “_ Who? _ ” In spite of overwhelming evidence that a jilted ex-girlfriend would be the cause of such extensive and petty destruction of property, there was now a magical tinge to the place that would confound the obvious conclusion and leave enough doubt for Eridan to perpetually ask, “Who?” It _ might _ be Vriska, but it _ might _be anyone else who might have slighted him through the years. And even if he did arrive at some conclusion, wrong or otherwise, the magic would keep asking, “Who? Who? Who?”

“Did I lose you?” Vriska called.

When she heard her voice, she dimmed the light show and stepped back out into the living room. “Sorry about that, still here. Might want to avoid the bedroom for a second, someone did something really rank in there.”

Vriska looked at her a second, words turning over in her head. A huge, witch wide grin spread across her face.

“You _ didn’t _ ,” she remarked, and then threw back her head in practically a cackle. “Oh _ my _ god, you didn’t. You’re a fucking genius, you know that? Holy shit.”

Vriska shoved the gallon of milk back in the fridge, a bottle of laxatives on the counter, and she made sure they went back in the cupboard to as not to arouse suspicion. Smart girl.

“Well, unless you can think of anything else to destroy his life. I think I’m pretty set. Frustrations are pretty well worked out,” she shrugged, taking a deep breath. She smiled, like a weight had been lifted.

Terezi smiled back, reflecting Vriska’s malicious energy and feeling pretty damn good about it. She felt like she understood Vriska so much better now, and having this experience together would surely make them into fast friends for as long as Terezi needed. She was just extra proud of herself, and she felt like a real _ faerie _ after so long imitating humanity. She channeled herself into cheering on Vriska as she shook the milk to dissolve the laxatives. Fuck yes. Hell fucking yes.

“The last idea I have is to strip him of groceries, but that might just be because I’m getting hungry again,” Terezi said. “Anything you want to eat over the next few days, just gather it up in your arms and we’ll go. Oh, and now is your chance to leave all the garbage in your car on his floor. Y'know, for fun.”

She largely let Vriska decide if she wanted to follow through on those suggestions, tapping her way to the entrance again and then waiting for her new friend to decide if she was done being a heartless bitch. Terezi had something of an idea that she wanted to discuss with Vriska over those aforementioned tacos, and possibly in anticipation of going to Nighthawk together. Now wouldn’t that be a fun time, to have Vriska’s inhibitions lowered to a point where she was dependent on Terezi even further…

“Nah, I think I’ll leave the rest of this shit where it is. No sense taking anything else with me besides the baggage, huh?” She shrugged. “Come on, Let’s go get those tacos and I’ll chip in on groceries.”

Vriska pulled her lanyard with her keys on it out of her pocket, not even remembering she’d stuck it there, but she could feel something stabbing her in the leg. She sighed as she pulled the apartment key off of her ring, and as she walked down the steps of the apartment and out the door, she tossed it in the direction of the overgrown bushes. She didn’t watch where it went. She didn’t want to know. This chapter of her life was over.

And by the sound of things, a new chapter with Terezi might be starting.


	3. Low On Self Esteem So You Run On Gasoline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is told from Vriska’s point of view as the girls discuss the past and where to go from here.

“I’ve never noticed this place before,” Vriska said as she pulled into the parking lot. It was a nondescript building, just a stand-alone building across from a strip mall with cracks in the parking lot. “I think I must have driven past this place a million times and never bothered to look. The food’s good though, huh?”

She got out and stood in the lot as she waited for Terezi. Not because she thought she needed help, but because that’s what friends did. Girls sort of traveled in packs and it appeared they were forming one. One that hopeful would stay together unlike her previous packs.

“Oh yeah, the food’s amazing. I love coming here,” Terezi said. “This one’s my shout. Don’t worry about it.”

The entire restaurant was clean, well-lit, and smelled like sizzling meat and chili spices, but it definitely had the family-owned quality of dinged glasses, tears in the booth’s pleather, and the odd chipped plate. The greeter knew Terezi’s name, and cheerfully called out “Two?” and found them a booth. They both slid in on either side, facing each other as the hostess laid down silverware and told them their server would be right with them.

So far this place was pretty cool.There was some soft music playing in the background, and no one else was seated near them, a private little spot in the back. Quiet and good for conversations, but still public enough a waitress passed by every few minutes. 

Oh, hold the fuck up.

“Do they think we’re on a date?” She asked, her voice hushed. Internally, Vriska started freaking the fuck out. She didn’t want Terezi to think this was anything more than it was, she hardly knew her. Yeah, she could justify moving with a stranger, she’d done it before when she was shit broke like this, but dating was crossing a line. Shit was still raw as fuck. She didn’t want to tear this relationship open, too. “This- this isn’t a date. We aren’t on a date,” she stated the obvious, still trying to look like she was keeping it together.

Terezi blinked at Vriska, and in an instant, agreed. “No! Of course it’s not! Seriously, of course this isn’t a date. You broke up with your boyfriend  _ last night _ and we just finished trashing his place. There’s no way I’d put moves on anyone who just survived dating Mr. Pissy Prince. The people here just know I’m single and are really invested in my relationship status changing, for some reason. They’re like overbearing aunts and uncles. Don’t worry about them, worry about ordering something that tastes like victory.”

Vriska cleared her throat and looked down, and then grabbed for a menu to hide behind as soon as the waitress came. The woman, for her part, looked slightly taken aback, but still pulled out her notepad and pen.

“What can I get you to drink?” She inquired.

“Coke, Pepsi, whatever,” Vriska said quickly, opening the menu to shove her embarrassed face in to. What the fuck was she so nervous for? What was  _ with _ that? Why did ‘not a date’ feel almost as bad as ‘on a date’ sounded like it would? That made no sense!

The waitress eyed her a minute, but thought better than to ask and simply wrote down Coke. “And for you? Want your usual?” She asked, looking up at Terezi with a smile.

“Please,” Terezi replied with a return smile.

“I’ll give you two a minute to decide,” she said, and then she was gone again.

Vriska huffed as she watched the waitress go, and waited until she was out of earshot to speak again. “It’s appreciated. Just so you know. The whole… not putting moves on,” she replied, not making eye contact still. Like Terezi could even see that.

“Don’t mention it.” Besides, if anybody says anything, you can just say we’re sisters,” Terezi offered.

“Maybe... you can articulate just what on this menu ‘tastes like victory’?”

“Well, whenever I make a big breakthrough in my work, my favorite to get here is a fresh tamale alongside a steak fajita with enough guac that it starts to come out of my nose.” Terezi laughed at her own gross word choice, and added for Vriska, “But I’m not going to assume I know you better than you do. Maybe all this time you’re a vegetarian and never told me. Probably not vegan because you ate eggs this morning, unless that was some kind of beggars-choosers sacrifice on your part.”

Vriska was definitely not a vegetarian. She was eyeing a taco basket on the menu with fresh pico de gallo and jalapeños, but the guac was sounding pretty good itself. Jesus, she’d been living off of fast food for how long? And hadn’t ate healthy in so much longer, it was a wonder her stomach wasn’t killing her just looking at photos.

The drinks came with the waitress, and she returned with her pen at the ready. Vriska ordered a steak fajita like Terezi recommended, but mixed it up with one of those tacos she wanted so bad. The waitress turned to Terezi then, and as if something set a light bulb off in her head, she asked, “Is this one check or two?”

“One check - mine,” Terezi decided, before adding to Vriska, “To celebrate  _ your _ recent accomplishment.”

There was some shuffling, menus being picked up and straw wrappers being opened, but it ended with Vriska sipping her drink to waste time before she spoke up. “I can pay, you know. But thanks for picking up the tab.” And then after a beat thought to mention something else. “And you probably don’t know this, but we look nothing alike. We could probably pass for step though. I like you a lot better than my step.”

Terezi’s eyebrows appeared over her shades. “You have a step-sibling? I have so many questions. I mean, I’d be a nosy bitch for asking any of them, but you deserve to know. So many questions.”

Vriska didn't answer. She didn't want to, if she was being honest. Her family was a sore subject.

Filling the silence, Terezi volunteered, “I’ve got a sister back home. She’s older than me. Kind of an action girl. She’d hate spending so much time cooped up in a room reading books, like me. I spent a lot of time in her shadow, thinking she was better than me just because she was louder. We’ve got a much better relationship now that we don’t live together.“

Vriska felt sympathetic, and she empathized about shitty ways to grow up. “Man. That sounds like a terrible way to grow up. I mean, kudos to you for getting along better now your separate, but I don’t know how you didn’t go out of your head, living in someone’s shadow,” she quoted Terezi almost to the word. “But I have a step brother, yeah. He’s actually a piece of shit. Had his dad babying him, and then my mom got married and she started babying him. Ugh. I can’t stand that. I had to get out of there too. They’d coddle him and then turn around and scream at me. I moved out when I was seventeen, moved in with one of my boyfriends and I never looked back.”

Vriska would never say it, but she deserved everything she ever got yelled at for. Her mother had her number, and knew exactly how mean she could be.

"It’s a weird thing, family,” Terezi said. “And so is gratitude. I know you could have taken the check, but I don’t want you to pay. It’s as simple as that. Besides, I still want you to feel like this meal is worthwhile even if we get on a topic that you might not be interested in.”

With that conversation starter dangling, Terezi deliberately cleared her throat and then folded her hands on the table, as professional as a job interview. “Vriska, you have a future ahead of you. What do you want to do with it?”

Vriska’s face dropped in to a frown. She rolled over those words in her head, like she would a marble between her fingers. Over and over and over again.  _ Vriska, you have a future. What do you want to do with it? _

She stared at her for a long time, listening to the beat of her own heart in place of the tick from a clock, keeping time just as reliably. Her expression never changed, just the same blank frown, while Terezi watched her with patient interest. There was no thought to give here.

“I don’t know,” she said finally, and then debated about what to say next. She wanted to ask why Terezi wanted to know, ask her why it mattered. Vriska’s own future hardly mattered to Vriska. No, those were too forward. Instead, she leaned in close to the table, and spoke in a low tone. “Do you know something I don’t?”

Terezi made a show of blowing a raspberry for a second, breaking the tension of Vriska’s empty epiphany. “Pfft, we could play a trivia game and find out? Who can name more Disney princesses or something? There’s plenty of stuff I know and you don’t and vice versa. But I was thinking, your life is kind of in shambles. We both know that. So I just want to ask, is there something you want to rebuild from the ashes? Like something you wanted to be when you were a kid. I wanted to be a dragon, but that’s impossible.”

Vriska just sort of made a face and shook her head. She was reaching for something, anything to respond with. Rebuild from the ashes? What was that supposed to mean? 

Across the table, Terezi prompted, “Honestly, no need to be so serious about this. Just have fun with the question!”

“I don’t know. I guess… uh. I guess I’d like to get married?”

That wasn’t exactly from her childhood. When she was a child, she wanted to be a pirate, which was also impossible. Marriage was at least attainable. It didn’t need a ceremony or anything, basically just a piece of paper that might be able to make someone stay longer than they usually did. It’d be messy to get out of, though. But that’s what divorces were for. 

“Aww, you want wedding bells, that’s sweet.” Terezi kicked under the table to give Vriska’s foot a playful nudge, too hard to be footsie but not hard enough to be mean.

“I’m turning it around on you, though.” Vriska said quickly. “What is it you want? I know, I know, law books, lawyers, blah blah. Besides that. Besides a dragon. What are you gonna do with the rest of your life, Terezi?”

“But besides dragons? No, worse,  _ besides _ lawyers? You know you’re kind of defeating the point of the exercise if you ask me to name what I want to do with my life while excluding the things I want to do with my life as viable answers,” Terezi had a wide smile on her face as she teased.“Yes, I’m an egghead who likes sitting in dark rooms groping entire volumes of legalese. I’d be happy if I kept doing that for the rest of my life! But if I want to put an action on it, I want to keep doing things like we did today. Engineering the demise of the wicked… or at least, personally ensuring the wicked get what’s coming to them. It just so happens that lawyers are really good at that kind of stuff because they can understand what people are guilty of and how to use the existing rules to make those who circumvent them pay.”

Vriska had met people who were driven before: driven to be the best at softball in high school, driven to get promoted to manager at one of her part-time jobs. But not driven like Terezi. She talked like there was nothing else besides doing her clearly much loved legal work. Nothing else besides seeing to it that the bad were put down and the little guy made it out from under their thumb.

It absolutely perplexed her.

She didn’t know what to say at the moment, but the waitress saved her by bringing their food just then. Steam rolled off of her taco and she watched it rise, clearly too hot to pick up and eat. The smell was equally as powerful, fried shells and the heat from the salsa and jalapeños. Vriska looked at her food a moment, looked up at the waitress to tell her no, they didn’t need anything else, and then looked at Terezi.

“That’s it though? That’s all you want to do? You just want to work and work and work?” She asked. “You live alone, right? And you moved away from your family you said. What are you gonna do when you’ve worked yourself sick and there’s nobody there?”

Vriska hated work, but something else still bugged her. Something about how… how Terezi was just all by herself. And she had no plans to change that it seemed.

“…I visit, pretty regularly,” Terezi said quietly, and it was clear that Vriska hit a nerve. “And my work really is fun, at the end of the day. But you’re asking about romance, aren’t you? Sharing my life with a special someone? I’m not opposed to that, I just… wouldn’t know where to start, finding that person.”

Vriska’s serious demeanor cracked with a snort. “You and me both, sister. It’s like a bad game of hide and go seek which turns in to hide and go fuck yourself.” She picked up her taco and bit in with a loud crunch, followed by what was practically a moan. ”Holy fuck this is good. Jesus, this place makes Taco Bell look like pig slop.”

“I told you it was good,” Terezi gloated lightly. 

Vriska only put her food down to take a sip of her drink, sucking down sweet cola that went ever so well with the spice. Eridan had always wanted to eat out at seafood places, and it would always be an argument. She hated fish, actually, Vriska realized, and this place might be her new favorite place. “So what’s your hometown like anyway? So your sister and the old boyfriend live there, right? Who else? Are you from like, Hicktown, USA or something? What’s exciting there?” Vriska decided to ask before she took another big bite and she couldn’t speak anymore.

“Eh,. I’d say the place is really beautiful, kind of deserves to be on the map, but getting in and out takes a while, so there’s really no conceivable way to set up a tourism industry. My favorite are the trees, they’re tall and shady and really fun to climb. Maybe that’s the most exciting thing in my home, swings tied to the tree branches. Kinda immature, I know, but I really do love the trees back home.”

“That does sound like Hicksville. You never find trees like that in the city,” Vriska replied around bites. “Tree swings, huh? Nah, that’s not immature. Sometimes the stuff from childhood is comforting and fun in a way nothing else is.”

“Maybe someday I’ll show you the trees,” Terezi offered. “Way later, though. You really got to be careful about when you go.”

The mention of it getting hard to get to and hard to get out of made Vriska think country too, maybe in some idyllic mountains where it was all dirt back roads cut through the countryside. No other cars on the road for miles, and occasionally you’d come across a cute little house with smoke coming out of the chimney.

The waitress roused Vriska from her imagination when she brought the bill over. 

“No rush,” she said, but Vriska still eyed her as she left.

Terezi quickly wiped her hands on a napkin, and then went feeling for the bill, skittering her fingers around the table until she finally found it and put it on her lap. Vriska watched her grope around for a credit card. She really should have like, made some sort of offer to pay. That was polite. But Terezi had said it was her treat and Vriska sort of didn’t have it in her to fuss over something dumb like that. 

She had ones though, so she could still help out. “I’ll leave the tip,” she told her, still eating, but regardless she set her food down and wiped her hands just as Terezi had done and took out her wallet to leave four dollar bills on the edge of the table.

“That’s fine,” Terezi replied, and it was quiet for a moment. Vriska really couldn’t tell if it was a comfortable silence or not though. Nobody else was around to feel it, and Vriska found herself picking at what was left of her food.

“Well,” Terezi finally broke the silence. “I’ve had a fun time getting to know you better, and telling you about myself when you wouldn’t leave well enough alone, but I had an idea for you. Kind of like a plan, if you don’t know exactly what you want to do next.”

“What do you mean?” Vriska asked, unsure where Terezi was going with this. 

“What do you say you take this time when you’re on my couch to say goodbye to the old you, and prepare to become someone totally new? Toss out the trash, set the clutter in order, burn the bridges to the losers, and just get ready to be a new and completely free self. What would you say to that?”

Terezi’s words made Vriska look up and squint. Now, Vriska always thought she had a strong sense of self. She knew herself and liked herself, as terrible as she was. Terezi’s question was confusing to her, why would she want to be someone new?

“What?” She deadpanned. “This isn’t the same mumbo jumbo from back at the apartment, is it?”

“Maybe it is the same,” Terezi said. “And I’m probably phrasing this badly. There’s no one who understand what it’s like to be you, except for you. It’s just my own… perspective. The idea that I can change myself into another person, capable of different choices, who gets different results… That kind of stuff. But your situation is unique. You’ve never been me, I’ll never be you…”

Terezi swirled her straw around her glass and kept talking. “Maybe it’s the people around you that are keeping you down. Starting with Prince FishPiss, there’s no way you can be your best self if you’re in contact with him. And your family, your stepdad and that baby brother, you can’t pick your family so you can’t have any obligation to them when they let you down… Does that sound more like mumbo jumbo that makes sense? Shed the people holding you back so you can be who you want to be?”

Vriska looked down at her plate, and gave a one shouldered shrug as she picked up the last of her food and chewed it. If her mouth was full, she didn’t have to respond right away and she used those moments to think about what she wanted to say in return.

There was a lot to dissect there. A different person who got different results. Yeah, she guessed her situation was unique. And so was Terezi’s and so was everyone else’s. She related pretty heavily to it perhaps being the people around her that ruined things and not her own bad attitude and habits. Especially about her ex and her family. She definitely didn’t want to be in contact with Eridan anymore, and she was hardly talking to her family as it was.

She was never going home to them anyway. Not unless she was dead.

“I guess,” she said after swallowing. “I mean. I agree with you mostly, about getting rid of shitty people, but the only person I know how to be is me. I don’t know how to be a different person. But I’m all for cutting people out, actually. You’re right. They are holding me back.”

The waitress came by and picked up the money, and returned after she cashed them out. “Nice seeing you ladies,” she grinned, and hurried off to check on another table.

“At the risk of sounding gross and sincere, I think you’re going to be great.” Terezi smiled. “Seriously, you’re determined, you’re creative, you’re proud, and you wreck the shit of anyone who crosses you.”

Terezi leaned her elbows on the table and grinned broadly. “While you’re in the process of cutting out useless people, I’d just like the chance to prove to you fair and square that I can keep up. I really want to see what you look like on the other side of this.” Then she waved a hand in front of her glasses, making a bit of a show of how she couldn’t see. “Well, metaphorically speaking.”

After dinner ended and the bill was paid, Vriska left the restaurant with Terezi and followed her home, less like a lost puppy and more than an aloof cat that wanted handouts without acting like it. That night she would delete Eridan’s number from her phone and not return a phone call from her mother. 

Thankfully, the heavy conversation from the restaurant had stopped and the apartment they now seemed to be sharing for good was quiet. Terezi had gone to bed, or at least to her bedroom, and Vriska shared a silent night with herself, alone, on the couch. And everything was fine. 


	4. Something Like The Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vriska and Terezi go clubbing. Told from Terezi's point of view.   
Chapter contains legal use of alcohol. 
> 
> Please drop us a comment!

Distance wasn’t always measured in inches, or feet, or miles. Sometimes it was measured by silence.

Vriska’s Facebook was gone within a week, her Twitter within two. Vriska’s social media was mostly filled with arguing anyway. It was easy to convince her that it was better for her blood pressure if she gave up the apps.

The change was going flawlessly. Vriska was a pretty good roommate, at least as far as crashing on Terezi's couch came. She tried to help out with things like doing dishes, even if she had a habit of never putting them away quite right, she was fine with doing the dirty work like scraping smelly food scraps. Her attitude shift after their conversation at the restaurant meant that she was less attentive about paying Terezi back for her hospitality. She accepted kindnesses without fuss. The rare bursts of "wait, let me do that for you" did not happen often or intensely enough for Vriska to tip the scales back. Terezi's sway grew by the hour.

As Vriska carved herself out from society, she became exactly what Terezi wanted.

Friday came soon enough though, and with it came a much anticipated trip to Nighthawk. Inside, Vriska grabbed Terezi’s hand to drag her in the direction of the bar. Terezi let Vriska drag her, playing up her own blindness as a little prank.

Clearly Vriska cared about looking good tonight. Her hair was done up, Terezi knew because Vriska had spent about an hour in the bathroom. She knew from touching it that Vriska had such long, thick hair. She could do so much with it, braids and ponytails and waves and curls, and her very fluffy bangs. For Terezi, she had made a more conscious effort with her clothes, not to look fancy, but just to look more... intentional. A normal shirt and pants, but with well-brushed hair, and a denim jacket with sequins over the shoulders that tasted like carbonated rainbows. Intentional and nothing more, and not for anyone.

“With all the flavors you like, I bet you know the best mixed drinks to order,” Vriska shouted over the loud music. “We should have done warm-up shots before we came, it’s always more fun to get drunk if you’re already drunk.”

"We can just start here!" Terezi answered Vriska's request for pre-gaming. "Start with shots, anything you like! And this is almost guaranteed to not be on their menu, but sour cherry midori tastes great. So does watermelon and whiskey. Ask the bartender for those, I'll take whichever one you don't want."

The two drinks were part of the plan. Vriska would finish one, Terezi would encourage Vriska to steal sips from her drink until hopefully Vriska consumed the majority of both cocktails. Alcohol had no effect on fairies, and this night would go all the better for Terezi if Vriska was shiftaced. It would leave her relying ever more on Terezi’s hospitality. Besides, it was the citrus Terezi had to watch out for. Oranges could knock Terezi just as hard as alcohol hit humans.

With Terezi’s blessing, Vriska left her standing at a table they’d procured in the center of the room. She ordered herself a couple of shots which she downed in quick succession, before she even ordered the mixed drinks. She returned sipping the watermelon whiskey, and handed Terezi the sour midori.

Terezi took her drink with a grin. She didn’t mind either way which drink Vriska took first because she wasn’t planning on drinking.

“I used to make trashy drinks when I was like, eighteen,” Vriska said. She leaned in to avoid shouting over the music, she still had to speak above normal volume. “I saw it on TV and thought it didn’t matter what kind of alcohol you used. So I used to steal two dollar vodka and mix it with Dr Pepper.”

“Two dollar vodka? That’s so nasty, at that point you might as well be mixing with nail polish remover. Didn't you have anyone in your life who could buy the booze for you? Or were you so proud of being a teenage thief?" Terezi snickered at that idea. She accepted the tonic and pretended to sip, imitating sociability.

“Little of both,” she laughed. “If my mom wasn’t watching me like a hawk, my step dad was. Plus, I dunno. When your stupid and a teenager, it’s a rush.”

This whole evening felt like a rush, leaning so close to Vriska and laughing together about teenage rebellion. Terezi also kind of liked the way her shampoo smelled on Vriska's head. Vriska was such a catch. Terezi couldn't believe how lucky she was to have such a catch, with just a week until she was spirited away.

That was an ugly thought. The full moon was Friday, and as soon as the sun was down, the veil would thin, and they’d be making a trip Vriska wouldn’t return from. After that, Terezi would go right back out and do the same thing to the next human. She had a quota to fill, four humans per yaer. As much as she tried to keep emotional distance from the humans she lured into the Faerealm, she'd be lying if she said she didn't get attached to each of them. And she couldn't lie.

Something one in particular had said to her when they crossed over always stuck with her. She'd never forget the hurt in his voice or the face he'd made at her. 

_ “You said you were my friend. I thought you cared.” _

Passing her humans along to other powerful faeries always broke Terezi's heart. But what else was she supposed to do? And some chilling feeling told her that she was going to be a little more than heartbroken this time around.

“Have you ever been here before? I don’t think I ever asked,” Vriska asked, snapping her out of it.

Terezi kind of kept her face with a demure, downward slope. Not 'looking' at Vriska but turning her ear closer in the loud bar. "Never before, no. Bars aren't easy places when you can't see, but I trust you to help me get shitfaced."

Vriska gave attention to Terezi like no other lured human ever had. Usually, the destitute humans that Terezi helped kept their distance. But Vriska was different, she looked at Terezi like she was the only one that mattered. Vriska made Terezi feel interesting. The little misdirects and half-truths that Terezi shared about her life and past were a rewarding game all on their own. Still, the way Vriska kept digging made Terezi in turn feel like something fascinating.

True to that ‘only person in the room’ attitude, Vriska laughed and kept all her attention on Terezi. “Oh, believe me, I can get you shit faced. Fast. But you’re gonna need something stronger than cocktails. I’m gonna go order us a couple of Bacardi shots.”

In a few short minutes, Vriska had four shots pinched between her fingers. She set Terezi’s down in front of her, and was quickly downing one of her own. Any alcohol Vriska didn’t drink was a waste but at least Terezi didn't need to worry about any orange citrus in shots.

Still, she tossed back the shot presented to her, pulling an exaggerated face as the rum slipped down her throat. "Whooo... Okay, that burns. Mind taking the third one yourself?"

“Noooooooo way!” Vriska moaned, over exaggerated and dramatic. “Terezi! You told me you’d let me get you drunk! You can’t–well. I guess you can, just slower.”

Vriska was of average height and average weight, and this was her–was it her fourth shot? Or her third? Her cheeks were beginning to color and her legs were getting a tad bit wobbly. Her plan to get absolutely smashed was in full swing, and it was working. Vriska laughed, likely thinking it funny Terezi was such a lightweight. She thought that was funny. Funnier than it actually was, and found herself leaning on Terezi's shoulder.

Terezi laughed along with an exaggerated pout of her own in response. She accepted Vriska's weight, another little benefit of being not technically human. The flush in Vriska's cheeks and the way all her motions were a little sloppier than usual actually made Terezi feel happier, too.

Vriska deserved to cut loose and feel at ease. She shouldn't, due to Terezi's intentions for her, but it gave Terezi more of those fuzzy-soft-fond feelings when Vriska showed trust and joy. She felt like Vriska deserved some kindness before things went to shit. It was like watching a flower bloom.  _ A spider lily _ , she thought.

It was starting to worry her now, that she'd have to pass Vriska off to some other faerie as soon as she got home. Would that person be as kind to Vriska as she deserved?

The bar was filling up. Lots more people that Terezi had to pretend she was unable to perceive, while she asked Vriska about anything and everything to keep conversation flowing. TV? Movies? Memories? Stories? Dreams? No, like, night-time dreams, what was the weirdest dream Vriska ever had? And on and on and on.

Everything was coming up roses, it seemed. That was until an arm propped itself up on their table.

That arm was connected to a man, around their age by the look of him. He had on a pastel button up and khakis, and a haircut that screamed ‘I got this because 6 of my friends in the frat got this exact one.’

Terezi could smell the sleaze on him as he spoke. “Sup ladies. You two wouldn't happen to be otherwise engaged tonight would you? With each other? Though that wouldn’t be so bad. I don’t mind watching.”

Terezi frowned. For a split second, Terezi wondered if this was Eridan, come to harass his ex, but her theory was dispelled. Anything Terezi could have retorted died in her mouth when Vriska spoke up instead.

“Pfft, are you for real?” Vriska snorted. “Take a fucking hike, asshole. Even if she was my girlfriend, which she’s not, still I’m sure she’d be a better lay than you are any day.”

That... didn’t seem like a comment straight girls made about each other. On top of that, Vriska's confidence in Terezi’s lovemaking skills made her feel even more interesting.

“What the fuck, bitch? Can’t you see when somebody’s being nice to you?” The stranger swore. “I oughta show both of you what a real man looks like?”

Terezi ran the lawyer-ing of hospitality in her head. She, Vriska, and Butthead here were all guests of the Nighthawk bar. That meant the bar had an obligation to protect them, while the guests had an obligation to behave. Calling on the bar’s proprietor appealed to Terezi, but better sense won out. Terezi had to show this guy up hard enough to make him leave them the hell alone.

“Okay, leaving aside the fact that you’re asking to  _ show _ a real man to a  _ blind girl _ , fine. Let’s measure you up.” Terezi swept her fingers around the table, clearing enough space for her to plant her elbow down as well. “Arm wrestling. You win, you can spend the rest of the night between us. I win, you leave us alone. Do you agree to the terms?”

The Terms should guarantee that he not bother them anymore if Terezi won. To guarantee she won, she let her magic flow into her arm. She wouldn’t imbue herself with strength, but she could make her arm an immovable object. The man would burn himself out on trying, realize he couldn’t win, and then concede defeat. And maybe Vriska would think Terezi was some kind of badass.

...That second part was not the point. Just a perk.

The man scoffed. “Arm wrestling? You’ve got to be joking.” But it became clear that she was not joking, and he scoffed again. “Alright, Alright. You got me. I’ll play, but you both better make room, cause you’re about to lose.”

He rolled up his sleeves, making a show of it, showing off his muscles, and positioned his arm on the table. He clasped Terezi’s hand, unaware of the enchantment she’d placed upon her own arm.

“Ready? Set. Go!” He proclaimed. He launched himself into it, trying as hard as he could to push her over. He looked surprised at first, and then got mad, his eyebrows scrunching. “What the fuck are you doing?You are cheating somehow!”

“Give up, loser!” Vriska crowded behind them. “You’re pissed cause a girl is beating you!”

Terezi focused on making sure her magical trick stayed strong and subtle. No light show or other signs of enchantment. It was such a shame. If this butthead had added that Terezi wasn't allowed to cheat, then she wouldn't have been able to. Unluckily for him, he forgot to specify that the match should be fair and square. Tricks like that were Terezi's favorite thing.

While Butthead pressed on her unmoving hand, Terezi grinned wickedly at him. She held on, waiting for him to start to lose patience, and relishing in the way his face turned pink, then red, and edged closer to a shade of purple. The sweat rolling off his temple smelled disgusting. Proof that Terezi had gotten the better of him.

"You wanna give up?" Terezi said. "If you buy each of us a drink, I'll let you forfeit." She didn't actually think she could craft up any magic to let her slam her opponent’s hand against the table, but there were people starting to peer over at their table. Pretty soon, they would have an audience watching him fail to defeat a blind girl.

He seemed to know it too. Mr. Butthead gave one more push with all his strength, but when he again failed to budge Terezi's arm, his dropped his hand, panting and shaking his head. “Man. Fuck you guys.”

Vriska was very drunk, and Terezi was reminded of that when she jumped on to her. Squeezing her in a too-tight hug, her own hair and Terezi’s hair in her face but she didn’t seem to care. “I can’t believe you did that!! I don’t know how to totally not sound cheesy about this, but you kicked his ass sooooooo hard. Like, so hard. And you didn’t even break a sweat. Holy fuck, you should be on Ellen.”

Terezi blew pretend smoke off of her arm and then elbowed Vriska. "Make sure he keeps his word. And you pick what the next drinks are, whatever interests you. I think he did use up a  _ little _ bit of my energy..."

Oh yeah. She ruled. Ellen DeGeneres would agree. Vriska was drunk enough she shouldn’t be alone, but she ended up wandering back with two very tropical looking drinks. Orange tinted and complete with little umbrellas.

“I made fuckboi deluxe splurge,” she grinned, passing Terezi her drink. “There’s like,” she paused, staring at her drink unable to remember what was in it, “fruit in it.”

It did in fact have fruit in it. Strawberries and mango, blended together with dragonfruit and mixed with vodka and a healthy slosh of orange juice. The drink was red, but Terezi could smell the orange stronger than anything else in it.

Oh no.

Terezi considered her options. She could refuse again, insist that Vriska drink both. But she could tell Vriska had been excited to extort that loser and wanted to drink together and celebrate their success. Any excuse to persuade Vriska that Terezi didn't want to drink would be a lie, and Terezi still couldn't lie.

“To hoes before bros?” Vriska said with a raise of her glass.

She took a deep breath to steel herself, like it would do any good, and lifted her cocktail too.

"To putting the wicked in their place." They clinked, and she sipped.

The citrus hit comically fast. Like shoving the corner of a carefully organized chessboard, the pieces in Terezi's mind shifted and tipped and spun, and even once they settled, everything was a lot more... wobbly. Already, she kind of felt like she had less control over her tongue. She licked around her teeth for more tastes of orange, and then licked the drink's straw as well. She'd drink more in a second when the first hit wore off.

"Vriska!! You know, when Chester the Fuckman was accosting us, I... kind of saved us! I'm the knight in shining armor!" Terezi giggled at that, for reasons Vriska might understand later. "Does the knight get a rewaaard for being so... valiant?"

Vriska turned to Terezi, the scent of her smile like a poisoned chalice. A hand on the front of her shirt surprised her. So did the following lips pressed against hers. Terezi had no idea what to do, pliant and confused and happy but also  _ fucking confused _ as Vriska kissed her. She was so warm, and having her close felt so nice. The taste of fruit and liquor on Vriska's lips scrambled Terezi's brain up almost as much as the first taste of orange had. Terezi's hands came to a rest on Vriska's elbows, not exactly an embrace, but a pose where Terezi could grip and demand Vriska stay close to her if she wanted.

When their lips parted, Terezi blinked behind her shades, unsure of what to say next. Holy shit. What now? What was she supposed to do now? What was the plan? Did she have to say something witty to make the kiss into something she gave Vriska? That was stupid, how would she do that? Okay, focus, Terezi, what do you want? What did she want out of this situation?

“How was that for a reward?” Vriska laughed.

Terezi's lips twisted in a smile, even as she tried to slur through a nonchalant dismissal. "Eh, it was okay. You call  _ that _ kissing? Can't you do better than that?"

“Do  _ better _ than that? That’s a tall order from somebody a lot less drunk,” she laughed again. Terezi laughed with her. Everything was funny now, everything. She wanted to be kissed again.

Vriska had the same idea. The hands in the fabric of Terezi’s shirt migrated. Down her belly and down over her hips, getting a grip there and giving some pressure as well. Not quite pulling Terezi in, but not about to let her make any space between them. Terezi felt her spine tingle, like a fern unfurling, when Vriska moved her hands to her hips. Vriska turned, facing her, and when she leaned in, she tilted her head but their noses still bumped a little. She kissed her, pressing their lips together again, while Terezi’s hands came to a rest on Vriska’s shoulders. This pose was fit for the cover of a harlequin romance, wow.

For what Vriska lacked in tact, Terezi could literally smell in passion. Vriska wanted this, didn't she? Snatches of memory from other conversations, about dreams and marriage, flitted around Terezi's head while she kissed Vriska back. Those dreams made a lot more sense to Terezi now.

Terezi started to kiss back more earnestly, definitely with a focus on her tongue. Once, she had impressed one of her marks with the ability to tie three separate knots into a cherry stem using her tongue. She knew she was skilled with it, and she wanted to let Vriska enjoy that, even with some orange-inebriated dexterity.

Vriska did finally pull away, still smiling, and took a sip of her drink from the corner of her mouth. “How was that? Better? I mean. I can do it over again if we need to, but if we do I can’t go again until you tell me where you learned to do that thing with your tongue.”

Terezi tilted her head a little, unsure of why they had stopped kissing, and she could smell that desiring mood clinging to Vriska like... fuck, Terezi can't think of anything but the way her underwear clung to her. Was she horny? Was this what horny felt like? It had really,  _ really _ been a while. Damn. What was she supposed to do about this? "Sounds like… if I  _ don't  _ tell you that it was better, you'll kiss me more? Doesn't give me much reason to tell the truth, then..."

Vriska laughed triumphantly—she thought it was a  _ triumph _ to kiss Terezi well, damn—while one of Terezi’s hands wandered its way to Vriska's wrist. She curled her fingers around it and lifted a little, leaning down to plant a kiss on the back of Vriska's hand. And then she licked right where she kissed. It was a pretty clean lick, like Terezi was trying to eat an ice cream, but then she started to explore. Licks on some places probably felt sensual, like against Vriska's inner wrist, right above the heartbeat, while other places were just... tongue on skin.

"Your skin tastes so good," Terezi complimented, "I want to lick you all over."

Vriska grinned wicked and said “I dare you to. But first, we gotta get out of here,” she snorted, half laughing. “Although, I’m sure we wouldn't be the first to go further than tonsil hockey here.”

Vriska led the way. Taking a last couple gulps of her drink before she began to stumble toward the door, pulling Terezi with her. Once Terezi started walking though, it was a bit more like finding her sea legs. She had to grip the edge of a nearby table rather than fall over.

“Oh—fuck, okay. Got it,” she huffed. “Okay. Let’s go wave down a cab.”

Terezi felt a little nauseated, the room spun and her decision making was not any better for it. Wave down a cab? Why was the cab in a tree? Would waving help with that? The nonsense didn't get voiced. Terezi instead draped herself around Vriska's shoulders to kiss and lick along her neck and jawline.

"Do we gotta go?" Terezi mumbled against Vriska's skin.

She was rewarded too, because Vriska tilted her head to ask for more. She used a hand under Terezi’s chin to pick her head up, and her mouth to cover Terezi’s own sloppily in a kiss that was almost all tongue.

All tongue was exactly all right by Terezi. She wanted to be so close to Vriska. Like, inside Vriska. But like... in a good way? She hadn't fully grasped the logistics of what that would entail. If there was a good way for Terezi to be inside of Vriska, or vice-versa, that was what she wanted, please and thank you.

“Yeah, we gotta,” Vriska answered finally, wiping her mouth with her wrist. People were staring and a few were hollering at them. Terezi had no idea how Vriska ignored them. Terezi wanted to snap at them,  _ She’s mine, you can’t have her.  _ “Come on, we gotta.”

Vriska continued leading the way, out into the parking lot, so drunk she tripped on the door jam. She laughed about it instead of swearing as they spilled out of the building.

“We need like, fuck. An Uber or something,” she mumbled, pulling out her phone and squinting at it. It took her a second to find the app right in front of her face. “I just wanna goddamn go home, what is this, Morse Code? Fuck, that’s a number. Okay.”

"Vriskaaaa," Terezi drawled, wrapping her arms around Vriska and planting her face on the other woman's shoulder, like she was going to curl up and take a standing nap right then. "You sound so pretty when you laugh... I wanna keep you... I really, really wanna keep you, but I can't, that's not... that's not what I do, but you're so..." Terezi pressed her lips together to keep in a groan of generalized frustration. "You're  _ amazing _ , Vriska, you are, you really are..."

Vriska looked up, looking through squint eyes at Terezi. “I think you sound like a. A something, fuck I dunno, when you laugh, but I think your pretty amazing too. You can keep me, I don’t care. Just so long as I can keep you,” Vriska replied. She punctuated the end of her sentence with another kiss, slower, with a little less tongue and much more force.

Terezi answered Vriska’s statement with a wide-eyed expression of shock. It was swallowed by kissing (lovely, beautiful kissing) but the implications of it sank deep into Terezi’s heart. Vriska didn’t care if she was kept. She wanted to keep Terezi too. But how was she going to work that out, was she going to have her own human? Who would she anger if she kept Vriska for herself? Could she really—?

She focused far more on the kissing, since that was an easier problem to solve, and also it felt amazing. Hot and close and everything Terezi wanted. She had her arms over Vriska’s shoulders too, the kissing pose of the most damsel-like romantic lead. And the longer they kissed, the more Terezi could feel her energy starting to drain. OJ took it out of her, but she didn’t want to stop kissing Vriska.

Somehow through the kissing the Uber got ordered though. A car showed up soon after, a man in the front seat shouting “Vriska Serket?” Over the bar noise still audible from outside.

“That’s me, that’s us,” she answered, being forced to break their kiss to answer. “Come on, let’s go home, okay? There’s plenty more places to touch with clothes off.”

Vriska gave the other girl a tug and Terezi stumbled her way into the car’s back seat. Once Terezi settled, she returned to licking Vriska’s skin, along the wrist and forearm of the side that had dragged her to the car. Still, as the car started to roll toward home, Terezi remembered that lips were a thing, and she lifted her face to meet Vriska’s, and trusted the Uber to carry them home.

Terezi kind of felt like she was floating. Was she losing control of her magic? She spent a single moment gathering every bit of focus she had to check and no, no magical influence. So this was what it felt like to be around Vriska? That sounded far more likely. Lovely, laughing, vicious, vivacious Vriska. All the human-style romance that Terezi had worked so hard to imitate but never felt herself bloomed in Vriska's direction. Vriska barely followed human social rules to begin with. She had something close to the same sense of justice as a faerie, but there was a gentle center, a desire to be loved, and loved forever this time, not loved only until she fucked up or failed to amuse.

Terezi wanted so very badly to keep her.

By the time gravel crunched under the car's tires, Terezi felt like she was dreaming, but with her eyes open. She clung to Vriska as close as she could get, but really had no idea what she was expecting to do with this closeness. Terezi wanted their clothes off so they could press bodies together. Her ambitions beyond that were getting foggier and foggier.

She didn’t even realize they were home until Vriska prodded, “Terezi, come on, you got the house key,”

Terezi blinked, like it would do anything to improve her understanding of her surroundings. Then she sniffed and got a clearer picture of what was going on. Right, she was in a car, with Vriska, and she had to leave. She had tried leaving in the wrong direction, which was to fall on Vriska. Right. Right... Right. Terezi's own high was fading from thrill seeking to a kind of floaty, vacant space. Everything was too light and too slow in her usually knife-sharp mind.

It took Vriska a few tries until Terezi got with the program and moved out of the car herself. She held onto Vriska's forearms and sniffed some more to orient herself while the Uber drove off, it's precious cargo of drunk chicks dropped off in an apartment parking lot. Terezi took tiny half-steps around, smelling out the way to the apartment door in a way that could be interpreted as her using her other senses. Like the sounds around the complex or the feel of loose stones under her shoes.

After that, Terezi fumbled around in a pocket to find her key. She had also forgotten that Vriska had her own key on a chain around her neck, and Terezi had found that gesture quite charming back when Vriska had done it. It reminded Terezi of something halfway between a collar of ownership and a vow of partnership. The charm had been very confusing to her. But once Terezi got past the threshold, she turned to Vriska and reminded her of something very important.

"Hang on, we were making out back there... and we came home so we could fuck, right? I'm still down for that..." Terezi's words were clear and consenting, but she had trouble putting in the energy. The odds of her falling asleep before getting Vriska's bra off were pretty high.

“Yeah, I still wanna,” she answered. The couch wouldn’t fit them both, so logically Terezi’s bed was the best place. She hadn't expected she'd be sleeping with Vriska at the end of the night. Thankfully, Terezi was in the habit of keeping anything incriminatingly fae out of sight at all times. The bed was made and it was big enough for two and that's what mattered. Well, that and keeping her hand on Vriska's skin.

“I have a mark on my thigh that looks like the shit emoji. Don’t laugh, okay?” Vriska said as she pushed open the door. It smelled like she was telling the truth, but joking at the same time.

"Did they make the shit emoji because they saw your thigh? Who are you showing your thighs to, Vriska? Hmmm?" Terezi laughed. She knew that when it came to strange appearances, certain features of her true form would make any shit-shaped birthmarks look completely normal. She sat down on her bed and separated from Vriska long enough to take her own shirt off. It left her in a bright red bra, before she reached for Vriska to kiss her some more.

There was still 'a mood.' It was the wrong mood for love-making, but still a mood for contact, for intimacy, for touch. Terezi was pretty sure she could make those two be the same thing for Vriska's sake as they kissed. Terezi's talented tongue a bit more languid, but still confident in how to kiss Vriska's breath away. And with one hand, she encouraged Vriska to touch her bare skin, around the same place where her hand had snuck under Terezi's shirt when they were still in the car.

Vriska tried to slow Terezi down. Cover her lips slower, leave a longer pause between pulling away and kissing again. The hand Terezi had placed on her body moved slow as well, starting down low at her hip and tracing up, fingers almost dancing over her skin until they reached her bra. She traced the elastic around as if she were going to unbutton it. Just before she reached the clasp, her hand slid down Terezi’s back. Terezi whined when Vriska stopped fiddling with the clasp and leaned her head on her shoulder.

“You’re so pretty,” Vriska murmured. “And not to be gay or anything but I think you smell nice. That’s why I wanna use your soap all the time. And not gonna lie, I’m pretty sure you kiss better than that guy in The Notebook”

The words she whispered were sweet though, and Terezi drank them in like they were a new and lovely form of intoxication. She loved that Vriska loved the way she smelled, it wasn't a trick to make Vriska into something Terezi owned. Vriska genuinely liked it. Terezi's heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest that Terezi knew something Vriska liked.

"When did you kiss the guy from The Notebook?" The technicalities of being gay or bi or any combination thereof faded away. The far more important question here was when Vriska had kissed a movie star? If she hadn't kissed him, how could she say that? That would be lying.

Actually, speaking of lying, Terezi wanted to be lying down. She started to let her weight fall backwards, heedless of Vriska's grasp on her. When Terezi landed, she realized how dumb that had been, but she giggled all the same and said:

" _ Vriska Serket _ , sleep with me."

The full use of her name,  _ Vriska Serket _ , carried magic in it. In any other situation, Terezi would have known it was a terrible idea to invoke her hold over Vriska in such a frivolous moment, but she couldn't help it. She knew what she wanted and she had power to make it happen. Vriska liked her soap, she'd like this too.

However, Terezi made only one slip: it was an ambiguous command. Terezi didn't make it clear to Vriska what she wanted. Frankly, Terezi had very little sense of what she wanted too. She knew only that she wanted Vriska. Vriska, Vriska, Vriska Serket...

“Terezi?” She muttered, sitting back up to look at her, but it was hard though. She was going to sleep with her, sure thing. Vriska fell over on top of her, sound asleep.

Terezi couldn’t find it in herself to even be mad about it though. Vriska was about 40% sprawled senselessly and 60% cuddled up against Terezi. With that ratio, Terezi accepted that it was time for her and Vriska to cuddle and fall asleep in each other's arms. She closed her eyes with a happy sigh and let herself slide into sleep as well.


	5. I'm the fury in your head, I'm the fury in your bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slow burn kidnapping.

Light eventually woke Vriska. She came around slowly, trying to use sleep to fight her hangover headache, but it wouldn't work. She knew that. When she couldn’t stand the throbbing any longer she groaned, shifting finally into the land of the living. She thought for a second she’d had the misfortune of getting drunk enough to call her ex and that this was Eridan’s chest she was laying on. But Eridan did not have breasts. All at once everything flooded back to her, and her eyes snapped open.

_ Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. _

She jerked back away from Terezi, as if that would erase everything they’d done last night. Terezi stayed still as Vriska pulled away like Terezi was a viper that Vriska had failed to notice in the grass. Gradually, Terezi’s hand came out from the covers to rest on Vriska’s clothed knee, as if trying to figure out who was in bed with her without speaking. How long had she been awake?

They might not have had sex, but Vriska felt she’d done something just as bad. Their friendship was ruined and it was all Vriska’s fault. It was her idea to go to the club, it was her idea to get drunk.

“Oh son of a fucking bitch,” she swore. Her first instinct was to run. Her shit was still next to the couch, her car was outside, fuck, where was the car key? Okay. Okay calm down. No need to take off. Maybe she could explain away the problem.

“Look, I’m sorry. We can just forget last night happened,” her words spilled out, like she was overflowing. “We were both really drunk and I didn’t mean for you to- to...” She didn’t know. 

"Hold on, go back," Terezi said. "What did I do that you didn't mean me to do? From what I understand, we got drunk and made out and went home together. We planned on doing two out of three of those things, so it's just the making out that's upsetting you, right?”

Terezi was trying to feel for her in bed right now. Foggy memories of the night drifted back. Last night, when they got out of the car, Terezi hadn't felt around for her bearings at all. And that raised more questions, like what had Terezi done when she’d said Vriska’s full name like that? “No, Terezi, last night was… Shit got weird, okay? Weirder than I know what to do with...”

“Was I that bad of a kisser?"

“No, no,” Vriska rejected, her cheeks turned bright red, “It wasn’t you. Kissing you felt-”

Terezi waited for her to finish that sentence, before relenting. “Vriska, tell me if I’ve done something wrong.” 

“You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me and my garbage sense of- of fuck. I ruined our friendship. Like, the best friendship I’ve ever had. Just like I ruin every relationship I’ve ever had, this is my fault. I shouldn't have kissed you back there, I should have kept my hands to myself, I- I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Terezi.”

Her chest felt tight. This was going to go one of two ways, she thought. Terezi would kick her out right now, or she’d say it was okay and they’d live awkwardly together and nothing would be the same and eventually Vriska wouldn't be able to take it anymore and leave herself. She’d betrayed her friend by mixing platonic feelings with romantic.

Instead, Terezi smiled at her. Smiled.

Vriska’s distress broke into dumbfoundment. Did Terezi know her that well already to know she was blushing?

"Apology accepted," Terezi said. "I mean, it looks like we both have the good sense to know we shouldn't date. You're still figuring out your life after Mr. Pissypants turned out to be even worse of a douche than you thought, and I'm not entirely sure where all my research is going to lead me, so I really shouldn't get tied down with a long-term relationship. It's seriously okay, you don't need to worry."

Terezi rubbed her face and sat up a little better, still in just her bra, and she faced Vriska's direction. "I actually worried that I might be the one apologizing to you this morning. I really want us to stay friends, too. And I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if something bad happened to you because our friendship got fucked up." 

“Well shit,” Vriska huffed. “You should have said that sooner. I'm over here worried about emotions and shit but I think we're both on the same no-water-works page.”

Terezi laughed a little bit, but not in a mocking way. . "I know that things might stay awkward, even if we both completely agree that we want to stay friends... so will you promise me, that you won't leave until you have somewhere to go ready for you? If it's really so intolerable to stay with me, then you'll get cracking on finding a new job and apartment really fast. But I don't want you to end up right where I found you, just because we got drunk and made some mistakes." She offered her hand to Vriska to seal the promise. "Deal?"

There it was. Confirmation this was going to go exactly like she pictured it. Terezi wanted her to get out of her life because Vriska fucked it all up, permanently, beyond repair. What, did she think Terezi was going to tell her it was okay? That she was in love with her too? Kiss her and hug her and ask to be girlfriends? No. There was no way. Staying just friends was for the best.

“Yeah, deal,” she agreed, nodding. But still, something else was nagging at her. “One condition though. I gotta know what’s going on here.”

"Can you be more specific?" Terezi asked. "Because what's going on right now is, we're waking up the morning after, I don't have a shirt on, and we're trying to figure out if the status quo can be taped back together. Or do you think there's something else going on?"

“That’s going on too,” Vriska agreed. “But so is something else. You did something to me last night and made me fall asleep. I wasn’t wide awake, but I was awake enough to know what was going on. And when we got home, I don’t recall you using your cane to get in the door... and that guy at the bar. He was twice your size.”

Terezi blinked her milky eyes at Vriska as she continued, “And you’ve been like, saying all this weird shit to me since I moved in. What’d you say that first day? Something about, protected in the house?” Vriska wasn’t even aware she’d been compiling all these receipts until now that things were starting to line up. It wasn’t just getting sleepy after hearing her name.

Her eyes went wide. “And you fixed my car.”

Vriska didn’t move away, but she didn’t get any closer. This was getting weird now she was realizing all these things at once, and she was scrambling for an explanation. Nothing realistic could explain this. Drugs could have done the sleep thing, but not the car fixing. The only sensible explanations were things that didn’t exist.

“Are you some kind of witch?”

"I'm not a witch," Terezi finally spoke. "I've never met a witch and I don't have any desire to become one either. When your car broke down, you poured water on the engine and it started to run, remember? With the guy at the bar, he was right, I did cheat, but that was just to make him go away and buy some more drinks for us. And... yeah, I know the protection in the house thing was really weird, I just... really like being dramatic. It's the kind of thing that makes it hard for me to make other friends.”

Terezi drew her legs up under her, her voice coming out soft and her tone changing from light with lingering sleep, to a defensive sort of hushed.

“I know I come across as weird, but I... I thought that you didn't care about that kind of stuff. You were different and special. Someone I could trust to be myself. Does all of this stuff really bother you so much?"

Terezi was reacting exactly the way Vriska would. Make yourself small, unassuming, low voice so it would draw people in, they had to listen if you were speaking quietly. She was not at all falling for this act.

But Vriska had been lying her entire life. Sometimes even when the truth was better. She knew enough to know when someone else was lying, or telling half truths, she thought maybe there were ways to catch Terezi in her lie, back her words into a corner until she gave herself up. Just like every teacher, principal, relative, after-school volunteer, therapist and most of all her parents had done.

“It’s not bothering me because you’re weird. It’s bothering me that all this is nearly unexplainable. How did I fix the car? How did you cheat? Be yourself, I like you being yourself--” That was probably a little too much information leaning to the romantic side, but Vriska continued. “--But while you’re being yourself, I want you to tell me: what  _ are _ you?”

There was a tense moment where Vriska kept her gaze hard on the other girl, and Terezi truly looked like she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t avoid Vriska’s gaze but she looked scared, which maybe did solidify she was blind. Typically when people needed a way out of a conversation, they wouldn't look at the person talking. Vriska waited. She wasn’t going to let Terezi out of this one.

"I'm a workaholic," Terezi said finally. "I spend way too much time with books and plushies and not enough time with people. I work really hard on making sure my friends find me kind of annoying so that I don't have to worry about if they hate me, because I already know they kind of do, because I made sure they did. I'm insecure about how great my sister is and how I feel like a runt living in her shadow, so I avoid my family as much as I can. I've never had anyone like me for being me, and Vriska, I just... don't want today to be the last day we spend together. I've never been more myself around anyone before, and I don't want to lose you. Do you trust that?"

She sounded desperate.

Vriska let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. That was a lot. And Terezi was being really vulnerable. Vriska could push, raise her voice, get mad and tell her that wasn’t what she meant and she knew it. But where was that going to land her? In bad blood probably, and it’d probably end with one or both of them crying. 

Vriska knew what desperate felt like.

“Okay, okay,” Vriska relented. She wasn’t going to get any answers today, and she really didn’t want to strain this thin line they were walking any more than it already was. “Come here.”

Vriska reached out and grabbed her shoulders, bringing her in for a hug. She leaned her head back on Terezi’s shoulder, not totally unlike last night. She still thought she smelled good, even sober. She pet a hand down Terezi’s back, a lot like last night too. God. She had to stop touching her like this.

“I trust you,” Vriska said, against her better judgement. Terezi returned the hug, snuggling into her and sniffled into her shoulder.

"Oh my god, you're being so great and I'm about to cry anyway," Terezi complained, but she didn’t sound like she was actively crying. "This is disgusting, I don't want to dribble snot on you..."

“Your fine,” Vriska huffed, a small smile creeping up on her. “Cry if you gotta.”

It wasn’t the threat of snot that made Vriska pull away finally, rather she wanted to look at Terezi. She was pretty even with her nose wrinkled and her chin wobbling. All those words last night, they were gone and they meant nothing now, but still Vriska was parked right here, close to the woman she wanted so bad, and she was powerless to stop wanting her.

"We probably need painkillers," Terezi said, sniffing again. "And breakfast. Do you know if there's a place that will deliver pizza for breakfast? I don't want to cook and I won't ask you to."

“Yeah, some pain killers would be good. And pizza sounds good too. And like, enough ranch to drown in,” Vriska replied.Pizza sounded drool worthy. Something salty and full of carbs and delivered right to them. She felt her pants for her phone, and found it still in her back pocket. She held down the home button until the familiar wavy line popped up and she spoke “pizza” into the microphone.

Terezi eventually let go of Vriska once the pizza place confirmed the order, the first one to separate from their little confusing puddle, feeling around the corner of the bed so she could orient herself toward the doorframe, and then assumably followed her mental map of the apartment to the bathroom so she could find the Advil. Vriska watched her go, watched her feel her way there, and couldn’t tell if it was an act.

—-

Two days after Nighthawk and five before Terezi went home, Vriska hogged the bathroom for an hour. Terezi waited on the couch with a Braille law book she wasn’t actually reading, listening to Vriska chatter about the hairstyles she had through her life before she settled on her current mane, long and wild as a bramble. Terezi really liked Vriska’s hair.

She really liked Vriska, honestly.

When Vriska emerged, Terezi smelled hairspray and bobby pins, turning Vriska’s wild bramble into a respectable pinned-back ponytail, smooth and silky and so unlike her that Terezi kind of frowned a little.

Vriska realized a second later, “Right, you can’t see this. Anyway, I just did up my hair nice. It’s respectable and whatever. It was a bitch to get it to behave, so this isn’t going to be a regular thing.”   
  
“Why did you even style it in the first place? We’re not going anywhere today.”

“You can stay, don’t worry. I’m going job hunting.”

Terezi felt a flash down her spine. Vriska could only leave Terezi’s hospitality if she found a job to support herself outside of it. Sure, Terezi had phrased it to make sure Vriska thought of their promise as a friendly expression of concern, but in the rules of a faerie, it was binding. And Vriska would only want a job if she found Terezi’s presence unbearable. “Um, why?”

  
Vriska scoffed. “So I can start paying rent around here, duh.”

Duh.  _ Duh. _ Vriska said it so simply, but Terezi had never had this happen from a human before. Especially now that she was old enough to impersonate an adult and not a child, no human guest in her home ever acted like they wanted to stay longer than they had to. They were too indebted to Terezi for their desires to matter in the end, but that had always been the conversation.  _ Let me hunt for a job. I need my own place. _

Vriska wanted a job so she could keep being part of  _ Terezi's  _ place.

Terezi heard her roommate--quarry, her  _ prey _ , get it together Pyrope--blow a raspberry. “Wow, what a vote of confidence there. Seriously, can you at least act like you think I can do this?”

“Okay, now you’re putting words in my mouth,” Terezi said, shaking off the stunned feeling. “You literally sprung this on me. You never said anything about wanting to get a job.”

“Aren’t you the super-lawyer here? How is it fair for me to keep living here if I don’t pay rent?” Vriska closed the bathroom door behind her and padded across the carpet to find her jacket, wallet, and keys. “Or at least the utilities. You must be turning on the lights a lot more since I need them to see.”   
  
_ The whole  _ point _ is that it’s not fair for me to give you free lodging! _ Terezi set aside her book and reached for her cane, tapping it along so she would ‘know’ when she ran into Vriska. “Fine, I know I shouldn’t complain if you want to give me your money. How about I come with you?”   
  
“I can do this on my own. Don’t worry.”   
  
“Please, Vriska?” Terezi added. “Let me be your cheerleader. C’mon, you can do it!” For emphasis, Terezi hopped onto one foot and punched a fist into the air, making Vriska laugh. It was a big, ugly, mocking laugh, and it put a matching smile on Terezi’s face.

“Sure, whatever. Ride along and sit outside or something.”

Victorious, Terezi turned for the door and started tapping her cane toward Vriska’s jalopy. She kept a smile on her face while her mind spun.

Vriska wanted to stay. No matter how much Terezi tried to strategize, her thoughts kept coming back to that. Vriska wanted to  _ stay _ . She wasn’t just a waif dependent on Terezi’s generosity for her survival. Not anymore. Not like the others. She wanted to stay.

How was Terezi supposed to give her up at the end of this?

In the passenger seat, Terezi heard Vriska turn the ignition. Yep, still ran. What a miracle. “So, do you have a resume? Planning on handing that out?”

“Ugh, no. All my resume would show is how often I’ve been fired,” Vriska complained. “But I’m not going to let that happen this time. Rent’s due and I’m not going to be a stripper.”

“So where are you going to work?”   
  
“Someplace that needs a pair of hands with a pulse. Clerk, dishwasher, who cares. Anything that lets me chip in.”

_ Anything that lets her stay. _ Terezi was in for it. This was unprecedented and she didn’t have any playbook for how to deal with this. She had to take a step back.

Okay, what did Terezi need? She needed to hold Vriska Serket in debt to her hospitality, and therefore vulnerable to Terezi’s magic. How would Vriska get out of debt? By contributing on her own. By getting a job and paying Terezi money. So Terezi had to make sure Vriska couldn’t get any money. 

Terezi had to sabotage these job interviews without letting Vriska know it was sabotage.

No biggie.

The nearest mall had two ‘sections’ to it, with the parking lot in the center. To one side, there was the real mall part, with shops and food court and big department stores at the end of rows. Then on the other side was the movie theater, a place Terezi cared very little about even though she could sense more visual information than she let on. Vriska pulled up there first.

“Taking tickets from assholes and cleaning up sticky popcorn,” Terezi quipped. “You think this is for you?”   
  
“They need bodies that get to keep their clothes on,” Vriska countered. “I’m not picky.”

What was Terezi supposed to do now? Vriska was a fighter, too fucked up to operate the way the human world wanted her to, but just fucked up enough to get what she wanted, one way or another. Maybe she had been so eager to indebt herself to Terezi because she would take any power offered to her and then use it for her own pleasure: destroying her ex’s apartment, partying at a bar, paying rent to Terezi so they’d always have a place together.

_ How am I supposed to give you away?! _

Terezi reached out and clapped her hand on Vriska’s shoulder. “Hey. You’ll do great. Be yourself _ , Vriska Serket _ .”

Channeled through her name, Terezi’s command took hold. Vriska frowned a bit at her, surely feeling the magic. “What kind of job interview advice is that?”

“Do you really have time to think about that? It’s counter-intuitive but effective.” Terezi said with a smile. 

The displeasure on Vriska’s face mellowed. The effect of the magic had to be fading enough to be tolerable. Vriska sighed and asked, “You wanna come in, or wait for me?”   
  
“Come in, of course. I won’t burn gas on air conditioning when the theater has a lobby.”

Terezi followed Vriska inside. The theater had a wide entrance, with snacks at the back, arcade games along the sides, and pleather couches in the center. Terezi sat on one of the couches and tapped her cane against the thin carpet while Vriska approached the snack counter and asked for a manager. A middle-aged human showed up and took Vriska over to the Arctic Thunder snowmobile racer to conduct a job interview.

Terezi closed her eyes and breathed. In, out. In, out. She could hear Vriska’s voice as she answered the manager’s questions. It started friendly enough, but Vriska’s answers started to take on a flippant tone that Terezi knew all too well. The manager asked follow-up questions with a more intense flavor of disbelief. Back and forth it went, Vriska’s voice getting bolder and more aggressive until the manager finally had enough. Terezi couldn’t hear exactly what the manager said, probably along the lines of “we’re not hiring at this time.”

As the manager walked away, Vriska’s rage reached a new pitch. “FINE! Fuck this place anyway! Have fun shoveling Hollywood’s shit on the rest of us!”

Then Vriska stormed past Terezi, who had to nearly jog to catch up. She tapped her cane just to give her fidgety fingers something to do as they left the theater for the parking lot.

“What  _ happened _ in there?” Terezi asked, like she wasn’t responsible for it.

“I just fucking lost it with him! What is he doing, asking questions about my passion for the team? He runs a fucking movie theater, I want to show up, get paid, and leave! ‘Oh, what would you do if patrons got in a fight?’ Clock the one who most deserved it, obviously! Why is that the wrong answer, huh?!”

Terezi smiled to herself as Vriska ranted about how employees should get free popcorn to eat on shift because “that shit gets thrown out at the end of the night anyway! Or if it doesn’t, you’re a shittier theater than I thought and you have bigger problems than me eating on the job!”

“Sounds like you need to cool down,” Terezi told her. “How about we get some coffee and you can try again? My treat.”

Vriska groaned. “You can’t keep  _ doing _ that. I’m supposed to find a way to pull my fucking weight.”

“So it doesn’t happen today, big deal. Tomorrow might be different. Calm down, then try again later.”

Vriska grumbled, but didn’t fight. Over coffee, she tore out her pretty bobby pins and let her hair go as wild as her heart again. Terezi sipped--but mostly sniffed--vanilla caramel almond latte while Vriska tried to brainstorm options for more jobs, each of them with the same frustrations as the movie theater.

Well, she escaped that problem just fine. Vriska wouldn’t get a job anytime soon, so she couldn’t pay Terezi and unbalance their debt. Just five more days, and Terezi could bring Vriska back to the Faerealm and present her latest human quarry to the Faerie Queen.

For two reasons, that moment filled Terezi with dread. First, because Terezi knew she didn’t want to give Vriska up. Second, because she didn’t know what Vriska would think of her after she revealed her true self.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please drop us a comment!


	6. When I Fall Apart, Your Needle Sews My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit starts to go sideways.

The miscellaneous keys and keychains on Vriska’s lanyard beat against the steering column as they bumped over unsmoothed dirt and grass. The cooler in the back seat didn’t move, weighed down too far with ice and drinks to be jostled, though the beer bottles clinked against the sides. The shocks on Vriska’s car weren’t great, and she was sort of worried their little ‘off road’ trip was going to end up with them hitting the car ceiling.

“Are you sure this is the right spot? I can’t see jack shit, it’s dark,” Vriska huffed, looking out her driver’s side window at all the trees and shrubs and plants and shit. There were probably bugs out there too. Good thing she’d brought a flannel.

“I didn’t even know there was one of those make out spots out here. Nobody from my high school ever knew about it anyway,” she continued, looking over at Terezi this time. “I swear to god, I know nature this, conservation that blah blah blah, but this places needs a fucking road or I need a truck.”

"Where in the world are you going to get a truck from?" Terezi asked, needling in that way she always did, but still she seemed... off. "Just keep your high beams on, who cares if you blind other people. You'll see it when you get to it."

“I’m gonna pull it out of my ass,” Vriska said with a half laugh, “high beams are on, but uh, I think we beat everybody else here.”

Vriska gave it some gas to climb the path, the rock cracklings under her tires as she forced the whining engine to do what it wasn’t meant to. There was a reason this car wasn't a four wheel drive. The ground evened out eventually, but stayed on an incline where Vriska had to stop. They were fairly close to a large oak tree and Vriska didn’t want to get any closer, in case she wasn’t able to turn the car around and get out or something. It was dark and she’d crash herself in this poor lighting at this rate. Her head lights lit the area, but she shut them off when she cut the engine, plunging them into the dark. Well, save for the big bright moon and all the stars.

“I can see the appeal of this place,” she noted, looking up. There had to be a million stars up there, and then some. “You want a beer or you wanna wait?”

"Beer me," Terezi said, like it was a decision and not just something they were planning on doing. They had beer, and they had chips, and they had each other, what was there to decide? "Did you grab the blanket? I’ll help you lay it out, just tell me where to park my butt and pin down the corners.”

“ ‘Kay,” Vriska answered, and popped the door handle to get out of the car. She opened the door to the back seat, opening the cooler to hand Terezi a beer, and then reached for the blanket on the floor. She held it under her arm as she grabbed her own drink, popping the top and taking a long sip before she shut the door.

“I swear to god, we might as well be on a ninety degree angle,” she huffed, hands on her hips as she looked around for a spot. She was exaggerating, of course, and she found a mostly flat spot soon enough. “This is as good a place as any I guess.”

So she threw the blanket out dramatically, spreading it out wrinkled and messy, but down. She was glad for the blanket too, she’d worn a pair of shorts that was a bit too short to be sitting on grass. She went to her knees still though, green staining her skin, getting her two corners. “You wanna just sit down and I’ll worry about the blanket?”

"Nah, I'll help with the blanket, I don't want to feel like a total layabout," Terezi said. She had a thin but long-sleeved shirt, and dark jeans of her own on, quickly gaining grass stains of her own as she fumbled one-handedly for a corner of the blanket to help spread it out. She moved like she felt off-kilter, and Vriska couldn’t decide if something was off or if Terezi was sensitive to the incline, being blind and all. 

Once she finished arranging her half, Terezi twisted on the top of the beer bottle until the cap came off and she took a swig. She chugged down three mouthfuls of beer before lowering the bottle again. Vriska climbed into the middle of the blanket on her hands and knees, holding her beer still. She plopped down next to her, hip to hip so Terezi would know where she was, and got comfortable, folding one leg and sitting on the other.

She looked down at the bottle in her hand and frowned at the sweat clinging to the glass. This was alcohol. Not enough to get drunk on, but maybe Terezi would let her play drunk and kiss her again. That wasn’t a good thought. She really shouldn't be thinking that.

“You doin’ okay there?” She asked instead, knocking in to her gently with her shoulder. “You’re usually pretty chatty. And if not chatty you’ve usually got some kinda sly comment.” It was a joke, but it was also true. “You’ve got good taste in beer, at least.”

Terezi managed a wry smile. "Sorry, I just got something on my mind is all." 

She took another deep swig of the beer to try and buy herself some time, like she didn’t want to talk before she settled on a topic. Vriska sat silently, ready to wait Terezi out.

"Remember when you told me you wanted to get married? I'm kind of still trying to wrap my head around that. Like, I can't imagine you being anyone's sweet little housewife. What do you want marriage to be like?”

“Yeah I remember that,” she answered instead. “I don’t wanna be a little housewife, and I certainly don’t want to be sweet. I dunno. I want somebody that’s gonna treat me like an equal. Somebody that’s gonna be my best friend, and not care that I’m bat shit most of the time.” 

She cracked a smile at that last part. Vriska looked up at the sky again, looking up at the moon. She’d spent most of her life in the city with light pollution and a crowded sky line. She was still a little sorta a lot in awe of the stars, and how big the moon really was next to those trees.

“What about you, Terezi? I don’t think I ever asked you about getting married. Do you ever think about putting a ring on it?”

Terezi drank again, her bottle already half-drained far faster than was smart. "Putting rings on things is a huge decision. Every time I considered it, I wasn't with someone that I could conceive of spending  _ forever _ with. But it's really hard, because I think I understand what people mean. This is the first time I've understood why people find it appealing… Something that’s yours, forever..." 

Terezi trailed off, like she wanted to say something else but changed her mind after her mouth was already moving. There was a lull in the conversation there that was a bit awkward as Vriska tried to decide what to say back. “Yeah, Forever is a long time. Don’t wanna end up with some half wit that treats you bad. Or worse, ignores you.”

Vriska took another drink of her beer, her gaze coming down from the heavens and looking out over the landscape. This was so far away from the concrete and chipping paint of that gas station they’d meet at. An entirely different world away, and Vriska felt like a different person for it. Especially after that night a week ago.

She wanted to talk, but she had no idea what to say. She was glad to be friends with Terezi, and glad that night hadn't changed them, but right now her heart was aching. Maybe it would have been better to wake up that morning and keep kissing her instead of sputtering about friendship. And right now? This was intimate as fuck. And she was pretty sure she was reading this right. ‘This was the first time’ but Terezi wasn’t seeing anyone. Just Vriska. They were alone right now. She could make a move.

“I’m going to get another beer,” she said instead, even though hers wasn’t empty. “Want another?”

Terezi said, "Yeah, that'd be great. I need to get myself seeing stars somehow. The air is great up here, but I'm jealous you can see all those glitter dots in the sky."

Vriska got up, walking the short distance to the car and grabbing them both another beer. When she returned, she handed Terezi hers but didn’t crack the one she’d brought for herself. It was just an excuse anyway, to leave the blanket and gather her thoughts but they were still swirling.

“Can I ask you something?” Vriska’s voice wavered, so she coughed into her hand to chase the warble out. “Were you born blind? Or did this happen to you over your life? That comment about the stars made me think...”

They weren’t hip to hip anymore, but they were still pretty close. Terezi was talking about stars and air, but right then all Vriska cared to look at was her. She’d seen the stars and they paled in comparison.

“I get what you mean. I'm legally blind, and I was born this way. My eyes don't work anywhere near well enough for me to use them for getting around and stuff. I've kind of got a grasp of what some things look like, through stories and through touch, but it's not everything. Once I found a Braille star chart, that was neat..." Terezi trailed off, her voice sounding stiff. 

Vriska scooted closer, returned to their much missed hip to hip contact, and twisted the cap off of her beer. She had been listening though, intently, and got stuck on the word touch. Terezi was talking about touch in a very different way, a way Vriska would never need, but between them, there was one sort of touch that was the same. It took just about all her courage, and she nearly chickened out, but her hand reached across the small space to take Terezi’s on her own. Her voice was quiet when she spoke. 

“Can I ask you something else?”

Terezi took another heavy swing of her drink and visibly tensed. "Ask away."

Vriska didn’t say anything right away. She’d missed holding hands. Slowly, she pet her thumb down the back of her hand, like she was smoothing something down though she didn’t need to. Maybe they didn’t have to talk about it, it was too hard to acknowledge this thing between them, but it was easy to hold hands.

She was going to ask if they could talk about the night they spent together. If Terezi remembered telling Vriska she wanted to keep her. She’d promise again that yes, she could. ‘This was the first time’ and Vriska was feeling it too. The words caught in her throat and she said something else instead. 

“Is this okay?”

Terezi’s hand flinched a little bit, but she spread out under the petting thumb, like the tension was melting away.

"Yeah, it's okay," Terezi said out loud, and she let Vriska keep brushing her thumb across the back of her hand for a moment, before she twisted her hand around to hold tightly onto Vriska's, more of a clasp. She could still stroke along the outside of Vriska's thumb, and she did, but so much of her energy came on holding Vriska tightly.

Holding hands was okay. Really okay if the way Terezi moved meant anything. She was glad they hadn’t had sex that night, because it probably would have ruined this. And right now? Vriska wouldn’t trade anything for this. She was grinning like a fool, and she didn’t care if they pranked zero teenagers tonight. This was so much better.

If holding hands was okay, then maybe more things were okay too. Could she kiss her and get away with it? Hold her until the sun came up? Even if they made no other move tonight, this small touch felt like the world. The beating in Vriska's chest was loud enough she wondered if Terezi could hear it.

She gave her- friend? Roommate? Something more?- hand a squeeze, gentle. Like Terezi would forget it was there. This girl, at this moment, on this hill, meant everything.

“Terezi?” She asked, quiet, like it was going to break the spell. “I don’t want to repeat the other night. I’m not drunk.”  _ I mean this, _ she didn’t say.

When Vriska finally did speak, Terezi turned her head toward her a little bit, as if to think about the implications. Like what did she mean by that? Like, what did she actually mean? What part of the other night did she not want to repeat? The furious makeouts, the accidental confessions, falling asleep before getting any action? Or just doing almost everything they had done that night, except sober his time?

"...What  _ do _ you want?" Terezi asked.

“You.”

That answer was simple. One word was all she needed. Vriska spoke it like there was only one truth left on earth and that was it. But still, she chose to expand on it. This was a little out of her comfort zone, she’d never fallen in love like this before.

“That’s all, I guess. Deeper than the way I already have you. I dunno. I like this thing we’re doing, but like. I think,” she cracked a wide, stupid grin and she couldn’t keep it off her face. “I think that I’d like it more if we were more.”

She’d never had a hard time telling people her feelings. Especially the negative ones. She guessed years of telling off teachers and swearing at her parents paid off. She wasn’t able to say everything she wanted, but most of it. She left off a bit of the drama, trying to keep straight to her point. “And I think that if I’ve been reading this right, you want to be more too.”

Squeezing the other woman's hand tightly, Terezi answered her, like it was the last shred of truth left on earth. "I want to be so much more with you. I want it more than I want anything else."

It was like there was an unsaid ‘but’ hanging in the air. They were about to shatter. To be pain.

Terezi pulled her hand away, breaking their connection and then standing up completely. Vriska’s eyes went wide. She let go?! There was no way in hell she had been wrong. She kept her face turned down on the ground, not even pretending to face Vriska's direction, before she gave the order. 

" _ Vriska Serket _ , follow me."

Terezi turned and started walking, sans cane. Vriska watched Terezi in horror as her lips moved, thinking for sure she was going to tell her to fuck off, but instead the words had her ears ringing. There it was again, same as last time and her body was compelled again to do as it was told. Follow her.

Vriska sputtered as her legs began to move on their own. Standing, off the blanket, into the grass. She could feel her muscles and her tendons, not numb, but they somehow didn’t feel connected. She reached down and touched her thighs, gripping at her shorts but her hands were no help. She looked up, up at Terezi who was moving as if she hadn’t just told her she was legally blind.

“What. What the fuck? What the FUCK?!” Vriska shouted. “Terezi?! What did you do to me? What did you do to me?!” Her voice only got louder as they traversed the path. “Can you HEAR ME? Can you hear a goddamn thing I’m saying to you? What did you do to me and where the fuck are we going?!”

Terezi closed her eyes behind her red shades for a moment, letting Vriska's words sink into her chest like a sword.  _ What did you do to me. _ Just the same thing Terezi had done to dozens of other humans, except this time, Terezi felt bad. She didn't feel clever or powerful or in control. She felt like she was making a mistake she'd never be able to live with.

But... she had to live with it. Because that's what you did with mistakes.

Terezi led her from their spot, away from the car, to a small hiker's path that led to the crest of this out-of-town mountain, where the grand oak stood guard over the portal. Vriska would follow. She had to. And there was no one around to hear her scream, if she screamed. Terezi wished she didn't have to hear Vriska scream, but ordering her to shut up seemed too selfish. 

If she was going to hurt Vriska, Terezi had to know how badly.

The path was fairly long, a ten-minute hike, which would pass quickly in the grand scheme of things but gave her a lot of time to listen to exactly how upset Vriska was at Terezi's betrayal. She really should keep her mouth shut and not say anything, but some other power (most clearly, a sense that Vriska deserved to know what was happening) made her open her mouth.

"How much do you know about faeries, Vriska Serket?" Terezi said her full name again, not to invoke any kind of new spell, but to try and create some formal distance between them. "How dangerous is it to accept their help? How hospitality from faeries must be repaid? That's what I did to you."

There. In terms of what Vriska deserved to know, she deserved so much more. But it was all Terezi was willing to tell her.

“What the fuck are you- FAERIES?!” Vriska shrieked. “What the fuck are you on about faeries?! Faeries don’t fucking exist, none of this shit exists. What is this? Some kind of complex goddamn hypnosis? Did you put something in my beer?” She accused, grappling for anything, anything at all to explain what was going on here, as if denying it was going to fix anything.

Terezi really didn't want to debate her own existence to Vriska, whose denial was probably due to panic. In the heat of the moment, hypnosis and drugs made a lot more sense than the magic of hospitality and the fae folk. She just kept her face pointed at the ground as she walked forward, smelling the path ahead for pitfalls.

Vriska grabbed for a low branch, trying to stop herself from going deeper down this darkening path, but her body wasn’t able to stop. The bark bit into her hands but she didn’t let go, not until after it broke and she fell, but still her body was compelled to follow. She got her legs up under her and stood again, back on the path no matter how much she tried and grit her teeth and bit her tongue to try to get herself to snap out of it.

“I knew it. I knew you weren’t fucking human, and I asked you and you cried and I dropped it! And I fucking held you and told you I trusted you!”

She couldn’t believe this shit. She didn’t know jack shit about faeries, but moreover she couldn’t believe Terezi, who held her and let her almost confess to her, was talking to her so cold, like a stranger. Everything was lining up though. This was the explanation she hadn’t gotten in the bedroom.

For Terezi though, dragging up the past drove the sword into her heart deeper.. It just hurt. It just hurt that someone Terezi cherished was so angry and scared.

“How was I supposed to know?! That you were gonna fucking do this to me,” Vriska’s lip curled and hot tears prickled in her eyes. “Are you gonna fucking kill me?”

"You're not going to die," Terezi said. "And just so you know, faeries can't lie. Everything I've told you is factually true. There's just... other stuff I didn't say." She took a breath and decided to speak to Vriska directly. That same voice that compelled her to talk before compelled her to keep talking now. "I'm taking you back to the Faerealm. Powerful members of my kind like keeping pets."

That knocked Vriska on her ass, metaphorically. Death sounded better than a lifetime caged or collared as someone’s pet. She supposed the assurance that fae folk couldn’t lie wasn’t much comfort either. 

“I don’t want to go,” she declared, her voice no longer as loud now she was trying to keep from crying. “Terezi please, I don’t want to go. Let me go, and I swear to god I won’t tell anyone what you told me. I’ll move out, you can keep all my shit, my car, my money, I’ll move back in with Eridan it’s no big deal. He’d take me back and I won’t tell anyone about you or this spot.”

Her face was red and she used the sleeve of her flannel to wipe away tears and hold it over her trembling mouth. This couldn’t be happening. She’d been alone so long in such a big city, and a inhuman woman was the one to kidnap her. Her mouth ran like a faucet, words and half choked cries running out as she refused to let sobs take her over. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. And she’d let anything spill out to stop herself.

“Please. Don’t do this to me, Terezi. I’m in love with you. I want to go home.”

Terezi stopped dead. 

"Vriska, I want to keep you, I do, I want that more than anything. But I  _ can't _ , I'm sorry, but I can't keep you. I have to... give you away." Just like Vriska struggled not to cry, Terezi struggled to, but in those last three words she felt a hot tear spill, and she rubbed her cheek to pretend it wasn't there.

Terezi was supposed to be used to this part. Especially when she got older and her victims stopped being children her age who could easily be led away with the promise of an adventure, there was always this part: the begging, when Terezi had to ignore their screams for mercy or freedom and just get the job done. But never, ever had it been this hard. 

“You can keep me. I already told you that you could. You can, you can, you can,” Vriska repeated like a mantra and she had to pause to muffle a whine and a hiccup. “You can keep me. I love you, how many more times do you want me to say it? I’ll keep saying it. You can’t stand there and say you never loved me though, because I can see it.”

Vriska spoke, but really she knew things couldn’t just go back to normal. She’d said the L word, but at the same time time words like pet and repay and keep were being thrown around and they meant something too. A certain fear for Terezi was installing itself in her chest. Like a lion behind the glass at the zoo, she was safe so long as the barrier was there, and now the glass was broken. They were alone and Vriska didn’t want them to be for the first time.

“You can keep me,” she said again, but the words felt different in her mouth.

Terezi had to set this girl straight. Vriska just didn't understand. Insisting that Terezi could keep her, no, that wasn't how this worked. But what would be gained from making Vriska understand? The same way Vriska twisted desperate words out of her mouth, Terezi twisted up inside too. The deep, cutting, burning guilt made her want to cry and keep crying and never move again. What kind of faerie was she, feeling remorse over something like this?

Okay. She'd at least explain to Vriska what was going on, just to remind herself why she was doing this, why things had to be like this. Here goes.

"I love you, too."

Fuck... That was not at all what Terezi had intended to say. And it was true, she loved Vriska, she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Vriska, forever and ever, but that wasn't going to  _ work _ ! Terezi rubbed at her crying eyes again and tried to steady herself, pouring anger into her words like an accelerator to get them out of her mouth faster.

"Is that what you wanted to hear!? You wanted me to say I love you?! I do! Vriska, I do, I love you, I've never loved anyone, let alone a human, but it's  _ you _ , I love  _ you _ , but this isn't going to work - I'm on commission, I'm supposed to bring people back, I've brought so many others back and you're the one I don't want to let go! I want to wake up with you and have breakfast and explore and gossip and scheme and - Vriska, I want you to be  _ happy _ but I  _ can't _ ..."

As Terezi's words trailed off, she started to sink to the forest floor, curling on herself and sobbing more openly now. This isn't fair. None of this is fair!

Vriska didn’t move for a moment, just watched her cry. ‘I love you’ had felt so many ways. At first, from her mother, ‘I love you’ had felt safe and then later on when ‘but this is for your own good’ was tacked on, it felt less genuine and more like a punishment. From her step father, ‘I love you’ had felt cheap. From Eridan and so many other exes, ‘I love you’ had felt forced and insincere. Like something they had to say.

‘I love you’ from Terezi burned in a way she hadn’t expected. She could feel it in her chest as conformation tried to eat the betrayal that had pushed her puppy crush to the ground and shot it. And Terezi said it again and again and it burned hotter each time.

Vriska couldn’t make her legs turn and run. She was still being commanded to follow. Her legs wouldn’t move backwards, but they would move forward. Closer to the lion. Closer to fear and fire and hurt. She went down to her knees too, and offered open arms for Terezi to cry in to. She had to be stupid to be doing this. Stupid or she had no self preservation.

Terezi lifted her head, more precisely 'facing' Vriska than she ever had before. She took off her red shades, and while for a moment her eyes were milky, like teal irises covered with cataracts, she blinked and the glamour dropped, showing that her eyes were a uniform scarlet color, alien and strange.

But she wanted this, in her lowest moment she wanted Vriska to hold her, even if Terezi's betrayal was the reason Terezi felt so low in the first place, and Terezi leaned into her hug without a second thought, burying her face into Vriska's neck and breathing deeply as she cried.

“I love you,” Vriska said again, “so much. And it almost hurts when you say it back. Keep me and I’ll keep you. Be selfish.”

"I want to, Vriska, I want to so badly..." Terezi whimpered through her tears. "You don't deserve this, you deserve to live... meet a human, love them..."

“I had a lot of chances to meet and love a human, but I didn’t. I fell in love with you,” Vriska spoke softly. It was a little fucked up, especially after she’d been begging not to have to go, practically pleading for her life and swearing at everything under that big bright moon. “I don’t want us to be apart. I don’t wanna live somewhere without you.”

Slowly, Vriska brought her hand up to turn Terezi’s face more toward her, to brush her hair back and rest her palm on Terezi’s skin as she took in those red, red eyes. Terezi didn't get to cling to Vriska the way she wanted to, her face brought back so that Vriska could look at her eyes. She sniffed a bit, struggling to get a good smell of what Vriska's face was doing from how weepy Terezi had become over all this. But at least this was a good sign that maybe Vriska believed that Terezi was an actual faerie.

The talk of chances to love humans compared to the reality of her love for Terezi made more tears fall. Fuck, how was Vriska keeping it together? Because she had already burned out her emotions screaming in terror at her abduction? And was love really enough for Vriska to just forgive her? 

"I still... tricked you," Terezi insisted. "I don't deserve you, and even if I did, I don't know what will happen. I don't know if they'll  _ let _ me keep you, I can tell the Queen but she might not... I don't have anything worth as much as you are. If we go to the Faerealm, they might take you from me, and I have to show my face tonight. I'm  _ due _ ."

She hoped Vriska understood enough of that. She kind of hoped that Vriska would make the smart choice and understand well enough to fucking leave, understand that Terezi wasn't good for her, and just break all of this off? Maybe Terezi would get a lighter punishment if she showed up without Vriska, but she had no idea what the Queen's whims would be.

“You tricked me, okay. Not gonna lie, I was pretty scared and I’m still pretty scared,” Vriska had to weight her options a moment before she continued. “But I’ve fucked up a lot of shit in my life and I know that sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on. I’m cutting my losses right now, I’m moving on and here you are still.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please drop us a comment!!


	7. She Said I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cross over.

The forest was dark around them now, but the full moon shone so bright it was like a torch hung in the sky. Dusk was long gone, shrouding the pair in what would have been the perfect cover for their travel to the fae realm. For now, they weren’t going anywhere. The girls sat together in the long weeds, part recovering, and part deciding what to do next. 

“So…” Vriska began. “What do you mean you don’t have anything ‘worth’ as much as me? You’re gonna have to fill me in.”

Terezi had to speak through her tears, but Vriska deserved an answer. "It's... the ownership of an entire person. Faeries use debts, like the entire concept of 'you owe me one,' to create unbalanced debts that mean the only way to even things out is to become the faerie's property.”

“Can’t your family help us? Or friends?”

“Faeries are kind of in a pecking order. I serve the Queen directly, and she or any of her nobles can ruin my shit. This job I have can be revoked and re-assigned at will. If anyone wants to help us, they need to have enough sway with the Queen to either convince her to leave me alone, or to give them the right to decide what to do with me, and then  _ they  _ have to go easy on me.”

“You’re just at the mercy of this Queen?” she rubbed Terezi’s back softly, trying to help stop her tears. 

Terezi rubbed her face a little more, the tears finally subsiding. "I'd say... the best solution I can think of first, is for me to... forgive your debt, go back empty-handed, take that punishment, and then... probably never see you again." 

Not to mention that just giving Vriska her autonomy back without any kind of compensation could hurt Terezi almost as badly as an anticipated punishment.

“No, that’s not an option,” Vriska shook her head. “That's terrible, actually.”

Vriska wasn’t going to go back to their apartment and sulk without Terezi. She didn’t want Terezi to be punished either. She sighed, still lost in the red of Terezi’s eyes, still glued to the color and the uniform uniqueness. Terezi could feel Vriska staring at her, and she honestly loved being the center of Vriska's attention, even in a situation like this.

“If there’s a possibility that you could go without me and not come back, then no. I want to go with you. If we get trapped in two different places, that’s a whole lot harder to deal with us in the same place but apart,” she sighed. 

It finally made Terezi's mouth twitch with a sad barely-there smile when Vriska immediately and resolutely rejected any solution that involved Terezi on one side and Vriska on the other. And there was a kind of optimism to it, that maybe Vriska might still be given away to some fae lord, but Terezi could still see her from time to time. That was... not the worst thing. See, already Vriska was better at this than Terezi expected.

“Is there a way to devalue myself?” Vriska suggested. “Or, who does have the sway? Like, who do we talk to? I’ll plead our case myself if I have to. Does getting help from someone else put you in debt?”

"Devaluation is... tricky," Terezi said. "Actions have different values to different people, and while you can lie, I can't. The Queen will be the one who appraises you and she'll probably get a pretty accurate sense. If you're actually able to devalue yourself, even a little,  _ and _ there's sway against the Queen to not punish me for coming back with a human I keep for myself, we've got a chance. I mean, this is still a very bad breach of orders in the first place. Imagine if you ordered an adorable puppy and the mail carrier delivering it to you decided to keep it."

Vriska rolled her eyes. “A puppy, huh?”

"You would probably need to save me from imminent death for me to have any kind of debt to you," Terezi said. "After the rules of hospitality balanced in my favor anyway."

Vriska was sort of getting a sense of this now. They thought about her like a puppy, this was literal ownership. The thought was disgusting, if she was being honest. She didn’t want to be property. Was that how Terezi thought of her too, she wondered? That Vriska was her property she was fighting to keep?

And then another thought stuck her like a slap to the face. Did it matter?

Vriska would have to save Terezi’s life for the debt to flip, so unless a fatal threat suddenly appeared, that wouldn’t work. Vriska saw the debt, and she saw what Terezi meant now. 

“I can handle that,” she agreed nodding. This was going to work, Vriska was confident. She just hoped it didn’t backfire on her like her other plans. “The person with the sway is on the other side right? We have to go...  _ there _ to find that kind of help? We’d uh. We’d better hurry, it sounds like. If you’re due.”

Terezi still had no idea where Vriska pulled all this confidence from. After hearing about the slimness of their odds, she just declared 'I can handle that' and set the issue aside. What would it take to have guts like Vriska Serket? Terezi honestly couldn't think of a person she respected more.

"Well, we have until midnight," Terezi said. "But we also don't have anything else to do out here. Might as well face the music. My sister said she'd meet me on the other side too, which will be... a thing that happens." Terezi unfurled herself from Vriska and stood up herself. "Oh, and... for formality's sake.  _ Vriska Serket _ , walk of your own accord."

Vriska cringed at her Name as an uncomfortable, magical ringing in her head accompanied it. . But when it left, it took the feeling of detachment in her legs with it. As the feeling faded, her legs felt a bit like static, like they were asleep. She took Terezi’s hand and rubbed them once she was standing. 

“What's your sister’s name?” Vriska asked. 

“I can’t tell you, it's not a thing faeries do,” Terezi responded. 

“Didnt you literally just get done kidnapping me?” Vriska snarked back. “You're taking me away from everything I've ever known after I told you I loved you and you won't even tell me your sister’s name?” 

Terezi made a guilty looking face. “Fine. It's Latula. But if she finds out I told you that I’m gonna be in deep shit with her.” 

“Sure,” Vriska said passively, already thinking about something else. 

Her mother came to mind. Would her mother come looking for her? Would she file a missing person’s? Would she get whatever money was in Vriska’s account later down the line, when she was declared legally dead? That’d make a shity retirement account, given what was in it. 

With her magic dispelled, Terezi hesitated for a second. She offered her hand to Vriska a second later. "We're headed to the oak at the top of the path. That's the portal. I'm also going to start looking... more different. When we get close."

“More different? Okay.” Vriska had already accepted so much of her, it’d be stupid not to accept her appearance. If the rest of her followed the trend her eyes set, she’d like it anyway. She squeezed Terezi’s hand tight and didn't let go, and took a first step up the path.

Terezi squeezed Vriska's hand back, imagining that she could draw strength into herself from her... lover? Were they lovers, because they were doing this? They said 'I love you' to one another a few minutes ago, and then Terezi cried a lot and confessed what she was and Vriska decided to leap headlong into the Faerealm rather than run away. She couldn't imagine anyone taking this better than Vriska Serket.

They continued up the path, each step going much faster now that Terezi wasn't also fighting with herself or listening to Vriska's screamed protests, until the path curved around and the oak appeared. There were a few signs of other human visitors, like fire pits and discarded chip bags, but the oak itself looked remarkably pristine. No one had even managed to carve its trunk with graffiti.

As Terezi approached the tree, her appearance started to shift. Her skin as a whole took on a blue-green undertone, noticeably unnatural, but subtle. Her ears extended into elfin points, stretching a few inches away from her head, balanced like scales. The shape of her face stayed the same, but thin parts thinned out further while the wide parts flared, the changes most noticeable around her cheekbones and her nose. And most prominently of all, her  _ clothes  _ shifted, her long sleeves melting into a shirt that suspiciously lacked a back.

At the same time, Vriska was watching where she stepped, but she was also watching Terezi from the corner of her eye. She looked down, stepping over a wild tree root, and when she looked back, she was sorry she didn’t just trip over it. Terezi was changing, right in front of her eyes. She looked mostly human still, mostly, but very distinctly... other worldly. She’d denied Terezi’s very existence a while ago, and now here she was holding her hand and. Changing. 

"Hang on," Terezi mumbled to herself, and she shifted her shoulders until a set of long and translucent wings, like a dragonfly, peeled off of her back and fluttered a little by her side. She kind of kept her face turned down while the changes emerged, because she really was scared of what Vriska would do in response. No more pretending this was all a dream, if that was still a hope of hers.

The wings made Vriska freeze in place, teetering at her own abrupt stop. Her jaw hit the ground, and the way the wings fluttered absolutely transfixed her. Terezi had been pretty before, really pretty, but this was so much more than pretty. 

“Did that hurt?” She blurted, unable to stop looking her up and down, and each time she noticed something more. “I hope it didn’t, god. You look- you look amazing.” 

She didn’t let go of Terezi’s hand, just used her opposite hand to reach out and touch her, her warm palm resting on her shoulder and running down, admiring the color of her skin. It took actual effort not to reach out and touch the tips of her ears or her wings. What would those feel like? 

Vriska was speechless.

Terezi blinked and then shook her head. "No, they lie flat. And they kind of disappear, the glamour..." But all of that was just to avoid the fact that Vriska just said Terezi looked amazing.  _ Amazing _ . Terezi's wings fluttered again, a little embarrassed tell that Terezi really liked Vriska’s compliment. The way Vriska traced her skin wasn't all that sensual either, but Terezi still took a sharp breath when she felt that touch. She felt treasured, by someone she treasured. That was love, right?

Terezi gathered herself first. "You think  _ I _ look amazing, wait til you see my real house."

She reached up with her hand to take hold of Vriska's other one, walking backwards toward the oak and facing Vriska the whole time. She could smell the path behind her, and besides, she knew it so well after so many repetitions.

Once she closed the distance to the oak, she reached back with one hand and touched a prominent knot on its trunk. From that touch, a small light glimmered, and then the shimmer of a heat wave spread from the tree. Vriska wasn’t sure what to expect when they changed over. Maybe the tree was going to twist and open, or they’d fall down a rabbit hole, but it was much simpler. She felt the heat on her face and that was it. Their surroundings changed from the worn-out hiking path into a lush mountainside garden. The surroundings still looked like night, but with more deep purples than blacks, and far more blooming plants surrounding them.

At first glance, it looked like home. The trees stood tall and green and the grass looked thick, not like spray treated city grass. Nature definitely reigned supreme here, but it wasn’t all that magical. But then, Vriska noticed a weird smell, a kind of faint herb-and-incense scent from somewhere distant. And when she looked closer, things started to look strange. Some of the flowers peeking up from the grass looked like they were made of crinkled paper. One even had a little crystal at its core instead of a center. Every time she tried to examine an oddity, she discovered two more, and needed to stop or else her head would explode. 

“Hooooly shit.” Vriska flat out gawked, looking over her shoulder and following it around in a complete one eighty. She wanted to laugh, because they were still together and they’d made it and this story was getting more far fetched by the hour. Her shoulders shook but no sound came out. 

Terezi smiled at Vriska's awe. Yes, this was absolutely the best reaction she had ever seen to the Faerealm. The previous holder of that title had hyperventilated and nearly broken his glasses in his attempts to stay calm, which Terezi still tried to needle him about, but he had still worn the crown of 'best human transition.' Vriska could take that from him now.

"Welcome to the Faerealm," Terezi said. "My sister should be close by; don't tell her your name, don't ask for hers. I'll take care of the rest." Asking Vriska to not speak felt cruel and unnecessary. Besides, if Latula got offended, Terezi could smooth it out. The Queen would be another matter.

“Okay,” Vriska agreed. This wasn’t someplace Terezi had brought her to play. “Got you loud and clear. Is she going to ask my name, though? Or, wait. That’s how this works right? With names? What do I say to her if she does?”

Terezi held onto Vriska's hand as she answered, and began to lead her deeper into the world. "Try and act nice about it, but you can say anything you want. You’ll notice how ‘you can call me’ doesn’t imply that what you’re introducing yourself as is your name."

The oak correlated with a point in the human world, and from there, the topography changed significantly, with the hillside leveling out much quicker, and then giving way to a valley and a forest and absolutely no urban structures in sight. Terezi's wings fluttered again, glad to be home, even if the circumstances weren't ideal. 

Vriska just let Terezi lead. There wasn’t much other choice than that, because first of all she wanted to stay together and second, she had no idea of the landscape or potential hazards. There was a third, much lesser reason too. Vriska wanted to look around more. Had Alice felt this way in Wonderland? 

They rounded the oak's hill and down the path, which had other large but infrequent trees. Beneath one of them, a figure leaned against the trunk, but she bounded over to them when she noticed them approaching. She had ears and skin like Terezi's, and a lot of facial features in common, but she stood taller, had longer hair, and wore a breastplate that looked like it was made from the same material as a beetle's shell. Her wings shone brighter, more iridescent than Terezi's.

"Welcome baaaack!" The other fae greeted with far more volume than warranted. "C'mere, squirt! Man, it's been forevs! And you got a new one, good work as always..." The other faerie turned to look Vriska up and down. She had almost human eyes, still in an unnatural shade of teal, but with familiar irises and pupils. "You got a name, babe?"

Vriska opened her mouth and went to give her name right away, so used to safe humans asking, but stopped short. 

“You can call me,” she started, like Terezi instructed, and then paused, scrambling for something. “Aranea.” She gave her mother”s name. Hope she didn’t mind if Vriska borrowed it. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

This was the sister, Vriska realized. She didn’t like the way Terezi’s sister was so warm to her, and then turned and… Vriska guessed it was just her gaze that made her uncomfortable. 

“Cute. Real cute! The cutest!” Latula said, declining to give her own name and turning back to Terezi. “How are you keeping her so calm? Some new technique, T-Rez?”

Terezi tried matching Latula’s energy with her smile, but it really wasn’t the same. The fae had no concept of jocks or nerds, but the sisters clearly occupied opposing ends of that spectrum. “She’s actually here of her own accord.”

“...Huh?”

“Yep.”

“But—”

“We actually need to see the Queen to discuss the particulars,” Terezi continued, not giving Latula a chance to ask too many questions. “Mind giving us an escort, ‘Tula?”

Latula took a breath and puffed out her cheeks, obviously confused but also obviously not going to get more answers out of Terezi. The elder sister sauntered back toward the tree and picked up a long, elegant spear, completing the ensemble of a fae knight, before she used the spear to gesture forward. “Alright, let’s hit the road.”

“Thank you,” Terezi said, giving Vriska’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

As they started on the road, Latula addressed Vriska again. “So,  _ Ah-rah-nay-ah _ , how much of this did my little sister warn you about?”

It was nice of Latula to escort them, Vriska thought, and then a second later it occurred to Vriska that maybe she was here to help Terezi should whatever human she brought back gave her trouble. It didn’t seem so nice after that, and Vriska was weary of her. But still she listened and squeezed Terezi’s hand back, and she tried to be polite when spoken to like she was told. 

“She said we had to meet the queen. And uh, that’s she basically owns me,” she responded. She didn’t know how much was okay to mention, they weren’t exactly on the right side of their problem after all. “She told me the general opinion of humans by you all. How you think of us.” 

Latula laughed at Vriska's bare-bones explanations. "Yeah, that's the gist of it! Humans are a ton of fun, but a big hassle too, so you gotta be some kinda hotshot to keep one. Terezi's got a gift for finding the ones that won't be missed on the other side!"

"...Thanks," Terezi said, for the first time feeling ashamed of her profession.

Vriska looked back, over her shoulder at the tree as it got smaller and smaller. She didn’t falter, just watched. And as they went further down the path it disappeared, out of sight. Not exactly out of mind though. “Terezi uh. Just to be clear, I don’t go back, right? Not ever?”

Terezi turned her head toward Vriska when she asked that quieter question. She wondered if Vriska already had regrets. 

"The portal is only open on the full moon," Terezi explained. "And even when it's open, you can't go through without a faerie escort."

The path swerved down and led to the edge of a lake, with a few rowboats tied. They looked like they had grown that way, the tree cultivated to be shallow-bottomed boats rather than assembled out of planks. There were no other faeries there, but the presence of multiple boats suggested the place saw traffic fairly often. Latula hopped onto one of the boats, taking pride in the way it rocked under her feet as she kept her balance. 

"Alright, you and the precious cargo, take a seat," Latula invited. 

Terezi stepped up next, her wings fluttering again as she then held her hands steady to help Vriska into the boat.

Vriska took one last look back, back at the path that’d brought them here, and then she took the help and stepped up. 

“I swear to god, if this thing tips...” she scowled, and that particular barb may or may not have been directed at Latula and the way she was jumping around but she didn’t look her way.

Latula laughed openly at Vriska's little threat. The cadence of it matched the way Terezi laughed, like such a thing could follow family lines, but her voice was still different enough that they couldn't possibly be confused for each other. "Don't worry, I'm a pro at this! Seriously, you're fine traveling to the Faerealm, but a little water spooks you? You're funny. Maybe I'll see if the Queen will award you to me."

"No way," Terezi snapped immediately, and her sister raised her hands in the cross-cultural gesture of surrender. 

"I'm kidding, Rezi! I don't have that kind of free time."

"I'm really sorry about her," Terezi muttered to Vriska, as if her sister couldn’t hear. "She's... a little wild. It's all an act, though."

Not as much of an act as it could have been. And it definitely raised Terezi's hackles in regards to their plan to devalue Vriska and convince the Queen to let Terezi keep her. If faeries just naturally found Vriska interesting and appealing, she'd have to work all the harder into her deception. The worries kept Terezi from making much small talk, focusing on staying close to Vriska while Latula pushed the boat away from the dock and used the end of her spear to push it out onto the lake.

As the boat glided through the water, small cottages started to dot the shoreline, then a few more docks, and then something akin to a very mossy boardwalk with a multitude of faeries milling about. About three-quarters of them had wings, and many had other animal features, like antlers, horns, tails, or beast-legs.

“Holy fuck,” Vriska blurted. She couldn’t get a good grasp on everything at once. The houses blurred with clothes and horns and fur and Vriska didn’t know where to look except back at Terezi. She expected little, quiet places, but this was just like the city, only no one looked like her and there wouldn't be anywhere to hide or blend in. 

“This is where you live? Are you shitting me?”

Terezi managed a small smile and laugh when At Vriska’s unmitigated awe, it gave Terezi a lot more hope that Vriska might be able to be happy here in the Faerealm.

At Vriska's question, Latula butted in, "Nah, T-Rez likes her peace and quiet.  _ I _ live in the city."

Terezi pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yes. This is close to the Queen's Court though, so it's kind of an urban center. I live on the outside of town. It’s a tree house.”

The little rowboat drifted closer to a new wharf, and Latula slowed it down so Terezi and Vriska could get out. "Catch you two later, okay?"

"Sure thing," Terezi said, just to wave her sister away. Dammit, she got away with being so obnoxious by being genuinely cool and talented underneath it all, while Terezi had to cheat and deceive... She shook off as much of the insecurity as she could, holding tight to Vriska's hand to guide her through the streets overflowing with faeries. 

From the docks they could see merchants milling around, loading and loading and fading into a bustling shopping district up the hill, but still further up that hill loomed a building tall with spires and wide in presence. It could only be the castle, where inside the queen would decide their fate. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please drop us a comment!


	8. Good Riddance To All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi and Vriska meet the queen and her human.

The city was loud and colorful, even though it was night. From the docks, Terezi led the way through a bustling marketplace with more sounds and smells than Vriska had ever experienced in her life. Stalls hocked food, frying it out in the open air and people shouted above the dull roar about sales and items only found there. Colored lanterns lit the path, large overhead strings of them as well as fixed to the walls of the small shops. Vriska couldn’t figure out what was powering them at first and then it sunk in; magic. 

Terezi shook off as much of the insecurity as she could, holding tight to Vriska's hand to guide her through the streets overflowing with faeries. Vriska let herself be pulled along, and this time she didn’t look back. They continued into a residential area, the houses getting larger and larger as they drew near the castle. 

"Do you have any ideas about how you'll convince the Queen you're not all that and a bag of beetles?" Terezi asked, seeming to have no problem getting them where they needed to go. 

“I guess that just depends on how bad you want me to look? I don’t wanna get kicked out of here, right?” Vriska was probably the first person to ever say that. “I could tell her about what we did to my ex, or I dunno. I saw a child therapist for a while, I can talk about that. I mean, we got here because I thought I was manipulating you. I can come up with things _ worse _ than that, if you want me to. I can fuck up my hair and my makeup too, if that’d help.” 

“Why would looking ratty help?”

Vriska shrugged. “If the Queen is going to value me like a dog, I want to be the meanest, ugliest dog around.”

Terezi shook her head. “Making yourself more of a disaster won’t help. Cat and mouse games are fun for the cat because the mouse keeps struggling,” she explained. “And I know you probably still have a lot of valid fears about _ what I am _, but for my kind, human wrecking balls are the most interesting. In the Faerealm, and with a total debt hold, a human can rarely cause a real problem.”

“You really should have thought through how you wanted to keep me _ before _ we got to this point.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Terezi squeezed Vriska’s hand tighter. “I mean, I’ll do what I can to back you up, within my own limits.”

“Because you can’t lie?” Vriska double checked.

“Exactly.”

“Then based on what you said earlier, about cats and mice, I gotta be boring,” Vriska said.  
“That’ll be a first.”

The streets were converging, growing wider with less houses and more perfectly trimmed trees, until they crossed a threshold of hedges into a large courtyard. The ground was covered in moonflowers, large, white buds that bloom only at night and reflected the moon's brightness like tiny diamonds. The larger than life castle was before them, the dark cobblestone of the building had never looked more intimidating. Terezi slowed down to a stop and took a deep breath. This was going to happen. Things were going to be up to chance in a second.

“For the record, if I was a human, you totally would have manipulated me,” Terezi said in a rush. “Chewed up my hospitality and spit me out. Probably robbed a blind girl, well, blind.” She turned back to Vriska and smoothed a piece of her hair behind her ear. “So... because I know this about you, I have a lot of hope. You’re a trickster, Vriska Serket. Show them what you’re made of.”

Vriska stared at her, this weird and wonderful faerie girl who stole her and loved her, and then laughed in spite of herself. “You literally just forgot the plan. I _ can’t _ show them what I’m made of, right?”

Terezi giggled too. “Well… Yeah, you’re right. My pep talk got a little mangled there. Sorry. We should go in.”

Desire to escape looking like a fool in front of Vriska finally overwhelmed Terezi’s fear of the Queen, so she marched the two of them across the courtyard. Terezi might have been feeling hopeful, but as they approached the large ornate doors, Vriska could only think about how hard this was going to be. Lying she could do, maybe too well, but boring was going to be a challenge. Vriska was about to answer, tell her she’d try her absolute best when the door opened.

A man stood behind the door, dressed to the nines, right down to his orchid bow tie. He belonged to the queen, that was very clear, seeing as he was practically dripping in finery. Like the chihuahua of a celebrity. It was very clear he’d tried to tame whatever was going on with his hair, it was shiny and combed to the best of his ability, but the cowlick that stuck straight up in front couldn’t be helped. He was clean shaven, and dressed well. He looked disappointed, and Vriska could only imagine. He was human, and he was being kept here.

“Oh it’s_ you _,” He frowned. “I didn’t think you were supposed to be back until later, how unfortunate.” He rolled his eyes and motioned for them to come in. “Well come on, come in, come show Her what you brought.”

“And a good evening to you too, John Egbert,” Terezi teased. She no longer had sway over him after giving him over to the Queen, but she liked reminding him that she knew his Name and had used it to her advantage once upon a time.

“Any evening I’m stuck with you isn’t good,” John snipped back. His tone was a little mean to be read as teasing by anyone else, but they’d clearly been through this before. 

Vriska didn’t speak but she was perplexed by how calm John was. He was just walking around, all on his own accord, not trying to escape or throwing a fit. He’d be here until he died right? Under the queen’s thumb? His behavior was distracting enough to keep her from gawking at the fine palace architecture. The place had high, vaulted ceilings with skylights that let in the moonlight. The floor had a smooth crystal tile pattern, and the light streaming through made the space glow so bright they had no need for candles.

Terezi leaned close to Vriska’s ear. “John's one of my former humans. I pretended to be into Ghostbusters and then told him the oak at the top of the mountain was haunted. The Queen decided to keep him herself even though he's absolutely the worst."

“In my defense she knew a suspicious amount about Bill Murray!” John argued. “Ghostbusters was one of the greatest movies of all time. Do you know how many must see movie lists it’s on?”

“What, Ghostbusters?” Vriska repeated, eyebrows raised. “Like, the eighties version, or the reboot?” 

“There was a reboot?” John asked, and his eyes practically sparkled. 

Vriska sort of gaped at him. He’d been here that long? “Um, yeah. Twenty-sixteen. It was all girl comedians. It was pretty funny.”

“No way!” John exclaimed, and then looked like he regretted being so loud, and cast a look toward down the hall. Nothing came or spoke back to him. 

“That's cool,” He said, much quieter. “Can you tell me about it sometime? How’d they do all the ghost science? Did you see it in theaters? Were people excited?!”

“It is,” Terezi agreed, pinching the bridge of her nose, “We really need to get back on task here,” Terezi pinched the bridge of her nose. “We’re trying to figure out a way to keep her royal highness from taking Vriska from me.”

“But that happens to all your humans,” John said, a little snide on ‘your humans.’ 

“We’re trying to stay together.”

“Why?” John’s confusion stuck on his face like gum on a sidewalk, when he finally noticed that Terezi and Vriska had been holding hands the entire time. “Wait. _ Wait. _ Oh my god, _ Terezi _ ! You have a _ crush _ on her!”

Vriska had never seen Terezi’s face go so flushed. She nearly looked seasick with how green she was. “Don’t rub it in!”

“How can I not? After all these years tricking humans, now you love one! Not so fun to know she might get taken away, is it?”

Terezi clapped her other hand over her eyes and sighed, trying to shake off the salt rubbed in her wound. 

“Time out, Egbert,” Vriska spoke up. “I get that you and Terezi have had beef in the past, but this is different. I’m here because I want to be. And you can be mad at Terezi for whatever she did, or how bad her Bill Murray impression must have been, but do you really want to _ ruin _ her _ life _?”

John kind of pressed his lips together. “She kind of ruined mine.”

“Okay, well, is it really all that ruined?” Vriska pivoted as hard as she could. “You’re in good with the Queen of Faeries! She obviously trusts you, if you’re the one greeting guests and not some foot-soldier faerie. You’ve got power to do what you want, and I bet all those eighties jokes _ kill _ with a crowd who has never seen a movie in their life.”

“I mean, they’re pretty good,” John admitted. “It’s nice to have an appreciative audience, but I really miss like, _ normal _ comedy.”

“Then you have a new buddy right here! Vriska!” She gestured to herself. “Come on, you just need to put in a good word with the Queen and make sure Terezi gets to keep me, so I can come hang out!”

Terezi gaped at Vriska as she spun her web for a fellow human. Everything Terezi knew about the two of them told her this wouldn't work at all, but Vriska looked excited, and John started to nod.

“I mean, I want to help,” John started. “But it’s really hard to pull the wool over Rose’s eyes. I can’t just tell her what to do either. Pet humans are really valuable to her.”

“Just give it your best shot! We’ve got a plan of our own ready, so we might just need you as backup.”

“Rose’d still be _ really _ mad if I’m being all secretive and doing subterfuge behind her back, is all.”

“For old time’s sake?” Vriska suggested, pressing herself close to Terezi. “Come on, bury the hatchet and do something nice for each other for once!”

John raised a finger. “Hell no. I won’t do it for _ her. _ And I don’t even know if I can do it at all. But for another human… it’s worth a shot.”

In the palace itself, they followed one step behind John as he voiced speculations about the Ghostbusters reboot. Terezi held Vriska’s hand as she ruffled her wings and spread them out. She hoped she looked okay. Vriska looked great already, though maybe Terezi was biased.

At the end of the hallway, the space opened into a throne room with an even higher ceiling. A throne rested in the center, and on it sat the queen. 

She was a woman with wings as large as her presence. Her impressive set of moth wings nearly filled the wall behind her, the chitin material that made them was largely black but with streaks of purple iridescence, the very color of her court, and caught the moonlight with a brilliant glittering with their gentle movement. The queen had moonlight pale hair, cut short and falling across the shoulders of her dress, a flowing, black garb that’s skirt pooled on the floor with extra to spare. The dress’s pattern was swirls, easy to get lost in, something you couldn't look at too long, but it fit her image. She went by the name of Rose, for anyone privileged to call her that, and Terezi was not one of them.

Terezi stopped short of the throne, but John kept walking, returning to the spot by the queen’s side that was meant for him.

“Hello, Terezi,” the queen bid, and her voice was light and airy as her beautiful wings. “You’ve returned on your first available night. Rather promising. Who is this here you’ve brought me?

There was a beat where Terezi had to decide what to do. At this point in the evening, Terezi would usually give the queen her captives name and be done, but tonight was no usual night. Instead, she elbowed Vriska. “Tell her your name.”

Vriska reacted fast, she looked from Terezi to the queen, and lied fluidly. “You can call me Aranea.”

Rose quirked an eyebrow. “Is that her Name?”

"I know her Name," Terezi answered, which was clearly not the answer to Rose's question.

Vriska noticed John pursing his lips and shuffling tensely. Even Vriska knew you didn’t talk to a queen that way. Rose also shifted in her throne and stared at the human, taking in her style and demeanor, and more importantly, her completely absent signs struggle. “Excuse me?”

"I do have a human ready for you, as ordered, but your highness, I am very sorry to report that I don't believe she is suitable for placement with anyone in your court," Terezi began. "She's a scorned lover, I picked her up when she was on the verge of homelessness. I don't think any of our kind would find her particularly fun."

"Then why bring her back?" Rose asked.

"So I'm not empty-handed. I thought that would displease you more."

Rose turned back to Vriska. "Tell me, what do you do for fun?" Vriska’s brain rushed. Of course the queen was asking that to get a sense of Vriska’s personality, which Vriska _ couldn’t _ show her. Fun? What did she do for fun? Oh shit. They were entrenched in this lie now. She liked to drink, and go out to eat and hang out, exactly what she’d done with Terezi back home, but that probably wasn’t what she should say.

“I like...” she started, and it took all her focus not to look at Terezi and plead for help with her eyes. Think, think. What did boring old ladies do for fun? “To read. Nonfiction only.” Lie. “I like to stay home and watch Netflix.” Lie. “I like...single person activities mostly. Like crochet. When um, I got bullied in high school, I never fought back. Never reacted. I just took the abuse.” Also a lie. It was not a struggle not to squirm, but Vriska was always successful in a lie.

Rose’s eyes narrowed, and she said nothing in return. The room fell silent, and for every second that silence drew on, the feeling of dread in Terezi’s gut dropped even lower. She supposed those things were fine, It explained why Vriska wouldn't have friends looking for her in the human world after her disappearance. Why wasn’t the Queen speaking?

John was finally the one to break the silence, his shoes clicking on the floor as he crouched at Rose’s side.

“Ma’am?” John spoke softly, and Rose leaned closer to listen . “Might I ask a question? Or you pose it for me? Might you ask for me, what Terezi suggests happen to the human instead of your highness giving her away?”

Rose kept her eyes trained on Vriska while John spoke. Terezi wanted to strangle him. All that talk about trying to help them, and John cut right to the chase before they convinced Rose that Vriska was worthless as a plaything! Terezi had seen Queen Rose indulge John’s ideas before, and by the look on her face, this was about to be one of those times.

They were fucked.

"That’s quite a fascinating question you’ve raised, John,” Rose stated, leaning back up to her regal posture. “Terezi, since you've failed to procure a human that you believe holds any value to me or anyone else who might care to own her, what do you think should be done with her instead? You wouldn't have bothered bringing her if you thought she should be killed."

"No, no, not suggesting that," Terezi leapt up to make sure they didn't entertain that line of thinking a moment longer than they needed to. Keep Vriska safe, no matter what.

"I suppose I could keep her with me. She's really..." Terezi tried to finish that sentence with 'very boring' and found she couldn't. She didn't think Vriska was boring at all. "She's not really suited to life in the human or faerie realms. She could just stay in my house. Honestly, I just wouldn't want to see her in the home of any other faerie."

Rose glanced from Terezi, to Vriska, and then back to John, her expression wordlessly asking if that answer had been to his satisfaction. John smiled wide.

“My lady, this new human sounds terrible. She doesn’t even seem to enjoy companionship. Whoever you award her to would be better off with an animal,” John replied. “Terezi failed you, so it should be Terezi’s job to look after her. Can’t hardly return her after she’s seen all this.”

Vriska’s eyes widened. It was working. No way this was working. After just a few minutes of talk, most of it about Ghostbusters, John was actually sticking his neck out for them. Terezi however stayed suspicious. There was a catch, there had to be a catch, John had to know that helping Vriska meant helping Terezi, and they had bad blood to this day. 

“I think Terezi needs another punishment as well. Just to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” John continued.

Vriska’s heart nearly stopped. No! That was worst case scenario! Terezi wasn’t supposed to get hurt during this, staying together or not, Vriska didn’t want to see her hurt.

John grinned playfully at Rose. “I think you should make Terezi my assistant next time I practice magic. Or oh! Next time you have a party. I’ll get out the joy buzzer and the water flower and the pie to the face gag. What do you think?”

There it was! The catch! 

A sly smile crossed Rose’s lips. "Well, Terezi? Are his terms agreeable to you?" 

Terezi hated John's fake magic, she hated the joy buzzer (how did that thing even still have batteries!?) and she hated the pie to the face gag. Terezi was going to hate every single second of being John Egbert's 'assistant,' but if this saved Vriska and kept them together, Terezi would do it. She would not volunteer to ever do it again, but for Vriska, she'd do it.

"...Perfectly, your highness," Terezi replied. She hoped this was all over. She wasn’t so lucky.

"Excellent. Let me add two terms of my own,” Rose continued. “Simple trifles, when you think about it. First, give me her true Name."

Terezi hesitated, but knew she couldn't avoid it. With a leap of faith, Terezi said her name in full: "Vriska Serket."

"Marvelous. Much lovelier than Aranea, though perhaps it is wasted on such a _ boring _ person," Rose said. "Moving on, I am not stupid. Your regret is false and in a few short minutes you will be walking out of my court with exactly what you desired the moment you walked in. I hardly care for your reasons, but my other term is this: you will not disappoint me again. Am I clear?"

"Yes," Terezi said, relief rushing into her body. "Yes, absolutely. Thank you."

Rose sat up and waved her hand again. "John, if you don't mind, please allow them some refreshments, then see them out. There's nothing else to discuss."

“Yes ma’am, I’ll take them out,” John nodded. He stepped away from Rose, throwing another smile over his shoulder for good measure, and he ushered both of the girls from the room with a hand gesture. “Please follow me, her highness has more people to see tonight, not simply you, let’s clear the room.”

He clapped his hands a few times, “chop chop.”

Terezi wanted to chomp John's stupid human ears off for the way he thought he could just wave around like he was the master of the palace. It was one thing when he opened the door and immediately scorned Terezi's presence, it was quite another for him to look so fucking _ pleased _with himself. The 'chop chop' absolutely made Terezi's wings hum like she wanted to use them as propellers for a flying tackle. 

Still, Terezi followed him out. Vriska was gladly right behind them. She didn’t want to stay here with Rose any longer than she had to, and she _ certainly _ wasn’t going to look back. If John was leading them out, then this was over, and they’d won.

As soon as they left the throne room and were out of sight, John stopped walking and spun around. “Alright! How was that!? Victory for Team Ghostbusters!”

"Yes, your improvisation played right into my schemes, just like you used to! Really nostalgic, glad we got that little romp down memory lane." Terezi folded her arms and sighed

“Both of you shut up right now! There’s something important I have to do!” Vriska butted in to their little squabble. She’d been quiet and undramatic for about three minutes too long. She strutted across the small distance between them, and threw her arms around Terezi’s neck (mostly because her hips were cluttered by her wings and Vriska was afraid to touch them), and pulled her into a sloppy kiss square on the mouth.

Terezi nearly melted into her arms. This felt _ so good _ , more than just the fact they were kissing, they had just _ won _. They were winners and their prize was each other.

“Do you have to do this right here?,” John said, then he stuck his tongue out. “Vriska, watch out! Terezi has cooties!”

“Fuckin’ lay ‘em on me then,” Vriska laughed, her lips barely parted from her lover’s. “She could give me the fucking plague at this point and I wouldnt care.”

John rolled his eyes. “If your makeouts get any sloppier, this floor is going to need a mop..”

Both of them elected to ignore him. 

Once Vriska felt like she had kissed Terezi enough to justify spending a few minutes not kissing, John led them to a palatial reception room. The couch couldn’t have been any more inviting if it had been addressed to Vriska specifically.

“Alright, we’ve got lavender scones or cinnamon snaps,” John announced. Go ahead and pick, I’ll go get it. And before you ask, no, I’m not getting out the orange juice, not after you raided us last time.”

"I have never _ raided _ you of orange juice,” Terezi retorted. “I have _ indulged _ and it was _ tasteful _, okay? I'm sorry not all of us share the same intoxicant senses and you have to use something as mundane as alcohol to get drunk.”

“I’m good,” Vriska tried to wave away. “I don’t know if I’d be able to keep down anything I ate.”

“We technically can’t leave until we’ve accepted something,” Terezi clarified. “Queen said so, and it’s rude to refuse a Queen. Hospitality rules sometimes force you to accept things you don’t want or need, because otherwise you offend someone and you’re on the hook for making amends.”

“I’ll just bring both, and you can figure out what you want on your own. The cinnamon snaps will probably be better if you’re queasy.” John suggested.

He left without another word, shutting the door behind them. Vriska released a huge breath.

“Can you take me home after this?” she asked Terezi.

Terezi’s wings fluttered just to hear that. _ Take Vriska home _. “Absolutely. I’ll get you settled in, home sweet home. And we can meet the neighbors whenever you’re ready. I know one other human who’s pretty friendly, if you’re up for it.”

“Are you trying to make me friends, Terezi?” Vriska asked, smiling.

“You’re already kind of friends with John,” Terezi pointed out.

“He’s a dweeb, but I don’t know. He feels like my kind of dweeb? Not like my stepbrother who couldn’t stand up for himself, John knows how to roll with it.” Vriska glanced sideways at Terezi. “Hang on, is this other human one of your other kidnap-ees?”

Terezi grimaced. “Remember when we talked about our dating history? He was my first, actually. He and I get along better than I do with John, on account of him being actually _ cool _.”

“I’ll meet him, if for no other reason than to put a name to a face. But I can’t believe you’re still _ friends _ with some of the people you took. I thought they’d be furious with you.”

The grimace turned to more of a sheepish smile. “The vast majority of humans I take _ do _ stay mad at me. This one is more of a special case…” 

John entered again, cutting her off as he opened the door with his hip. In his right had he carried a glass platter with cookies and upside down cups, and in his left he carried a pitcher filled with chilled water. John set the plate down in front of them, and set to pouring water in the cups, focusing on not spilling it. Vriska went to reach for one but stopped short. Hadn’t food been part of how she got wrapped up in this?

Terezi finished her sentence. "...And John isn't even my friend, he's more like a slug I found crawling on the outside of my house."

“If I’m a slug, you’re a toad,” John countered Terezi.

“Wait, is this safe to eat? Rules-wise?” Vriska interrupted, holding up the cookie before they could start throwing insults. “Like, what’s the difference between me accepting food from Terezi and accepting food from John? Er, accepting it from the queen? Is that right?” The question was sort of posed to both of them.

"No, this is going to be fine," Terezi said. "You gotta pay really close attention to what people are asking for and what they're giving. We haven't asked the Queen for anything outside of the negotiation we just did back there, but the Queen wants to give us some, and it's polite to her for us to accept. If you're with me so far, remember when we met. You needed someplace to stay, and I provided, and _ in exchange _..." Terezi let that part hang in the air.

Vriska felt unsure, and it must have shown on her face because John assured her again. “It’s okay, really, you can take it. It gets easier, you get better at watching out the longer you’re here. Well. It might not for you since you're stuck with a Terezi. She’s a whole different case.”

He kept smiling as he handed her a glass of water. Vriska took the cup but she didn’t drink from it, even after they’d both said it was okay. The different feeling she’d had was starting to twist in her gut, and she felt a little sick now. 

The Queen had said that Terezi wasn’t allowed to disappoint her again. She’d be right back to stealing humans, and if Vriska was never allowed to leave the Faerealm, then she’d be leaving Vriska alone. Was that why Terezi wanted Vriska to make friends with other humans? So she wouldn’t be scared?

So far, that wasn’t working. Vriska and Terezi had just triumphed over bullshit faerie classism and Vriska was already scared again.

In the moment, Terezi raised her glass of water. “Then, here’s to John not being a complete egghead and helping out for once in his life!”

“Here’s to Terezi for biting off more than she can chew for the millionth time!” John toasted back.

Vriska toasted too. “And here’s to me, for dealing with you nerds.”

John laughed. “You’ll get used to it.”

“What should I get used to first?” Vriska asked, mostly to get her mind off of the ticking clock that would make Terezi leave her. “Like, I don’t even know why I’m worried about it, because my life _ sucked _ before, but do you get homesick, John?”

”Yes, sometimes,” he answered, sitting down on a matching loveseat across from them. “My life was kinda sucky too. But on the bright side, it’s nice here, and I like Rose. But I think your stay will be different than mine.”

That wasn’t a satisfactory answer. Vriska was hoping he’d say no, that there were enough things here to keep him distracted, but that wasn’t what she got. Terezi would leave for her work and Vriska would be alone at her house, missing her and missing home in an unfamiliar place. She really thought she might throw up. She squeezed Terezi’s hand, as if to reassure herself she was still there, and tried to keep any changed in her expression off of her face. She didn’t want either of them to know.

The homesickness question was a weird one for Vriska to ask, but Terezi really didn’t know what to do with it. Vriska was distant from her family, friends, everything. She hadn’t held any strong ambitions about her life in the human world that couldn’t happen in the Faerealm. Was she really going to miss Netflix specifically that much? Did that have anything to do with her question earlier about being unable to return?

“The tree house is going to feel like home before you know it,” she said. “If you liked the apartment then you’re gonna love my place. _ Our _ place. Promise.”

Vriska had liked the apartment. This was a weird line she was toeing because that place was Terezi’s, but it felt like home despite her having no ownership to it and having only lived there two weeks. Her connection to Terezi was what made it _ feel _ that way, so by that logic Terezi was right, she would like the tree house. That was reassuring and it did some to settle her stomach.

“You’re so sappy,” John huffed, rolling his eyes again but he was smiling still. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you in love. It’s gross.”

“Sure. Our place. Not that this place isn’t fancy as shit and John here isn’t a riot, but I’m thinking I’d like to go home,” Vriska said. There. She was already calling it home. Maybe she just needed to get used to things, give it some time so she could adjust. Learn the ropes. Same as moving to a new city, right?

“Sure. I’ll take you home,” Terezi grinned. She could smell how unsure Vriska was feeling, but hearing her call it that gave her a certain sense of pride. “Hopefully this goes a lot better than the other night. I’d like to do more things besides sleep tonight.”

John made a very distinct disgusted face as Terezi stood, and pulled Vriska up with her.

“If you’re asking me to have sex with you, I think my brain would probably explode from the shear amount of shit to process, but yeah, I’ll give it a shot,” Vriska laughed. “Come on, let’s go then. Take me there.”

This time when John rolled his eyes, he meant it. He was more than happy to guide the pair back out of the room, back down the hall and dump them off in the courtyard.

“Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!” He bid, waving childishly. And then he slammed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments last chapter! Every single one is appreciated!


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